Learning from Education in Emergencies

Navigating Education and Conflict in Burma and Beyond

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What are the possible futures presupposed within the organization of refugee education worldwide? Do the understood purposes of refugee education align at the global, national and school levels?

My guest today is Sarah Dryden-Peterson, an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who has been researching refugee education for 15 years. Together with Elizabeth Adelman, Michelle Bellino, and Vidur Chopra, she has recently co-authored an article for the journal Sociology of Education that looks at the purposes of refugee education today. Sarah and her colleagues argue that quality refugee education must further a sense of belongingness.

Citation: Dryden-Peterson, Sarah, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 181, podcast audio, November 18, 2019. https://freshedpodcast.com/sarah-dryden-peterson/

Will Brehm 2:30
Sarah Dryden-Peterson, welcome back to FreshEd.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 2:33
Thanks so much, Will. It is great to be on your show.

Will Brehm 2:36
So, there has been a lot of talk about futures lately. We actually recently did a whole show on UNESCO’s new project on “The Futures of Education: Learning to Become,” this new idea that they’re promoting. So, when it comes to refugees, and particularly refugee education, how can we even start thinking about the idea of futures?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 2:59
It is such a great question, and really one that preoccupies our work. I love the show that you did with Noah Sobe, and I am really excited about this commission’s work. And it does, like you’re saying, really resonate with the work that we’ve been doing on futures within refugee education. I was thinking about it, and the last time I was on your show, we were talking about unknowable futures and this uncertainty that is embedded within the experience of being a refugee. And I think, like UNESCO’s project, our work has really tried to embrace this uncertainty of futures and think about ways in which education can contribute to future making despite the uncertainty. I do think that within refugee education, there are some quite specific parameters that are important to keep in mind when we think about the futures for which education prepares young people. Particularly because most national education systems quite explicitly prepare young people for a future that is connected to that nation-state. So, national governments invest in education with the promise of returns of economic growth and social and civic development really to accrue to that nation-state. But, of course, refugees are, by definition, non-citizens. And so, the specificity of their futures, especially in terms of their physical location and where within a nation-state they might be, is uncertain and unpredictable. And so, my co-authors and I – Elizabeth Adelman, Michelle Bellino, and Vidur Chopra – we really in this paper try to think about four possible futures for refugees: a future of resettlement; a future of return; a future of integration; and a future of transnationalism. We observe that how children, families, and teachers, as well as others involved in education, really think about the purposes of refugee education in terms of the future that they imagine. And the kinds of refugee education they design really depend on those futures.

Will Brehm 5:00
So, what sort of purposes of refugee education do these different futures presuppose, in a sense? I mean, these different imaginations of where refugees will end up in the future would, I guess, determine how we then or a nation-state or an NGO or whatever, organizes education for refugees?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 5:25
That is right. And so, in this 14-country study, we see different nation-states orienting refugee education in different ways, depending on the dominant view of what the future might be. So in a situation where the future is imagined as resettlement – meaning to a distant, usually high-income country – refugee education usually takes place such that refugee young people are able to develop some skills that would be transferable to a new context, and develop language skills that would be useful in that new context. But of course, the future of resettlement is quite small and unlikely for most refugees, with only 1% of refugees having that kind of opportunity open to them. So, there’s really quite a limited amount of refugee education that focuses on that future.

Will Brehm 6:17
So, this would be something like a refugee that, you know, leaves a particular country for whatever reason, and claims refugee status, but then ends up getting resettled in a third country. And the idea would be that that person then lives there for the rest of their life and becomes a citizen.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 6:38
That is right and becomes a citizen and has that different certainty about what the future would be in resettlement because of that pathway to citizenship.

Will Brehm 6:47
But this is a very, as you said, small percentage of refugees actually have this future possibility of resettlement. So, what about return, the future of return?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 6:56
So, a future of return has really been, in many ways, the dominant way of thinking about what refugee education is for, what the purposes of refugee education are over historical time, with this idea that, really, most refugee young people and their families would look for a future of return if that future of return were possible. But I think what is different right now and is important as we think about refugee education is that so many of the conflicts that young people are fleeing are protracted. So that a refugee young person living in exile can expect to live outside their country of origin for an average of 10 to 25 years, which is very different than it was in the 1990s. So, this future of return, while desirable in many ways, is often unlikely. Yet, preparing for a future of return often requires quite different kind of education than would preparing for a future of integration, for example. So if a refugee were to be certain of a future return to a country of origin, it would be quite clear what language of instruction would be useful, the kind of credentials that could transfer to that country of origin system, and there would be the potential for more continuity, again with that certainty of the possibility.

Will Brehm 8:19
But it is not that certain. I mean, 10 to 25 years, this is incredible, right. So you can be a child and basically have your entire childhood in a third country, where, you know, you are being educated, in a way, to go back to a country that you have no connection to by that point, after 25 years.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 8:38
That is right. That is right. So, we talk about this future of return. But the reality for many young people, even if they were to return, it is actually not a return. It is a journey to a place where they have never lived themselves because of this protracted nature of being displaced and living as a refugee.

Will Brehm 8:58
So, integration becomes perhaps a future that is more realistic.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 9:03
So that’s been a real shift within thinking on refugee education within the past ten years or so, with this idea that if the reality of exile is at least medium-term, but often long-term, that thinking about education that prepares young people for a future within the host country is an important way in which education could help prepare young people for a future. So, a future of integration would involve enabling labor market participation and a sense of belonging through the kinds of education that are available. And this idea of permanence, so that a future would be built together with nationals and in that place. One of the distinctions I think we try to make in this paper that’s important when thinking about policy, too, is that the idea of inclusion and the idea of integration are really being used quite differently within discussions on refugee education. So “inclusion” could be temporary and really could be just about structures of access to school. So, including refugees within a school. But “integration” really implies a much longer-term commitment to this idea of building a future together and to social belonging, which is the crux of this paper.

Will Brehm 10:22
Right. So, okay, so, there’s refugees are being included in national systems of education, but not necessarily integrated into those systems.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 10:33
That is right. That’s what we really find in this paper: that there has been widespread movement toward including refugees in national education systems over the past six or seven years, and yet that inclusion does not necessarily mean the social process of integration and working toward a sense of belonging.

Will Brehm 10:55
And so, you also have this other idea, what you call in the paper “transnationalism” and this future of transnationalism. Can you explain what that is, and how some refugee education, the purpose of refugee education, presupposes this idea of transnationalism?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 11:13
This future of transnationalism really comes out of what we hear from refugee young people in particular. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has long defined what they call three durable solutions, which are, in fact, somewhat like thinking about the futures, which are these futures of resettlement, return, and integration that we’ve just talked about. But we find that most refugee young people really imagine a future of what we call “transnationalism” that’s not geographically bounded, and that where, in fact, opportunities might be created through mobility rather than limited through mobility and through borders, which is often the experience of refugees. And I think part of this idea of needing to conceptualize a future of transnationalism stems from the uncertainty of any of these other futures and entails some need to think about flexibility and adaptability within refugee education, as well as some of the structural dimensions of national education systems that, in fact, are not transnational, and really do provide certification and provide content-specific education that is what young refugees find often only relevant within a particular nation-state.

Will Brehm 12:29
So, when it comes to these different purposes of education, and that obviously then gets translated into particular policies and practices of education, of refugee education, you know, I guess, who’s deciding? You know, what are the actors, who are the actors involved in different cases, say at the global level, deciding how we should even imagine a future of refugees and then translate that into policy and practice? So, who, in other words, are the actors, sort of thinking through some of these issues?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 13:03
We have really tried to structure this paper – and I think this is important methodologically – as a vertical analysis. So looking at actors at a global level, at a national level, at a local level, and really trying to tease out some of the differences in the way that the purposes of refugee education are viewed at these different levels. So at a global level, there are multiple actors involved in refugee education, including UN agencies like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and UNICEF, as well as Education Cannot Wait, a host of international NGOs that have a long history of working on refugee education, as well as bilateral donors that are committed to funding refugee education either through some of these multilaterals and NGOs or in direct funding to nation-states. And I think for all of these organizations, increasingly it is becoming evident the need to work in collaboration across the kind of organization, which is not always the norm in humanitarian situations. But as we see this movement toward including refugees in national education systems, this real shift toward a longer-term thinking and toward development, and the kinds of collaborations that are needed in that kind of setting.

Will Brehm 14:19
Okay, so that is the global level. What about at the different national levels in these different countries? How is refugee education being imagined, and you know, the future of refugees being imagined?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 14:31
At the national level, we really see this policy of inclusion looking quite different in different contexts. And I think for this particular refugee education policy of inclusion, it was really designed to be adapted to national contexts. And as a result, we see different kinds of models of inclusion developing. So, in Malaysia and Bangladesh, for example, we really don’t see inclusion taking place. Governments have not adopted a policy of inclusion, so that refugees and nationals attend separate schools, and refugee education is in these particular cases quite informal, with lack of certainty around what certification options might be. But in other countries, we’ve seen a real rapid uptake of this policy of inclusion since the first UNHCR strategy in 2012 put it forward. So in places where refugees live in camp settings, such as in Kenya, we see an inclusion model developed where refugees use the Kenyan curriculum and use English and Kiswahili as the languages of instruction, even though refugee and national children are isolated from each other because geographically they live in different spaces within the country. So, they don’t attend school together, but there are structural elements of inclusion in terms of curriculum and certification. Yet other places, like in the example of Lebanon, we see a model of inclusion that involves refugee children attending the same physical schools as nationals with many of the same teachers. They use the same curriculum, the Lebanese national curriculum, Lebanese national examination system, but at a different time of day in a double shift. So Lebanese students come to school in the morning, and refugees in the afternoon. It is only in few places, and not consistent across national contexts, that we see refugees and nationals actually attending school together at the same time. And usually, that is in urban areas where there may be smaller populations of refugees or long-standing populations that are quite integrated with national populations.

Will Brehm 16:40
So in a sense, using these two examples that you provided: Lebanon, in a way, would be more closely connected to this idea of a future of integration, whereas in Kenya, it’s much more about a future of inclusion; or you know, it’s not necessarily really integration since, you said, they’re in two different physical spaces.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 17:01
And I think this is a really open question within refugee education of what can enable integration and not just inclusion. So even in the case of Lebanon, there is quite substantial separation between national students who attend school in the morning and refugees who come in the afternoon. In our work there, particularly with grade nine students, we see a lack of relationships, a lack of possibility for relationships to develop between refugee students and national students. There is a short gap in the middle of the day so that, physically, the students don’t cross paths within the schools. And quite a tight sense of the school really belonging to the national students, and the refugee students just being there in the afternoon to have some opportunity for learning. But as one of our participants said, no opportunity to become established. And I think that, again, it provides this example of where inclusion can be a strategy towards providing access to education and can provide this access to the structures of what a quality education might involve. But very little focus on what it means to develop relationships across long-time residents and refugees and this process of social integration and belonging.

Will Brehm 18:22
Right. So, one of the main purposes of education being this idea of social cohesion. Not only preparing someone for the labor market but actually being connected to some national society or even local society. And so, it does bring up a very interesting point about what is even the meaning of quality education when it comes to refugee education.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 18:46
I think that is right. And you mentioned both labor market participation and social cohesion here. And across our 14-country study, we really hear these dimensions of education being described at almost all levels by teachers, by students, by families, by international organization actors, as real purposes of education. And yet real tensions in refugee education as to whether it is even possible to think about those dimensions of quality. So, in most places, refugees don’t have the right to work. So, this idea of education as a preparation for labor market participation is not guaranteed. And what we often see is young people very cognizant of this disconnect between what they’re being asked to do in school, how they imagine that preparation will assist them in building a livelihood, and yet knowing what the laws are in place that will prevent that from happening. And also, in terms of social cohesion, in many places, including most nation-states that host refugees, there are long histories of conflict and divisions so that social cohesion, as it is taught, particularly within national curriculum and within national education systems, is often about a fairly tight, standard view of what national unity might look like. And that often can be quite politically, ethnically, linguistically exclusive, not only for refugees who can’t see themselves within that national narrative but also of marginalized national students. And there’s also this idea that refugees, particularly in places that continue to experience conflict and division, might disrupt very fragile social cohesion, which can result in even more forceful standardizing of curriculum for the sake of control and legitimate goals of preserving unity, when it is fragile that way.

Will Brehm 20:50
Is there a good example of a particular country where that phenomenon is found?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 20:55
We do see this in our ongoing work in Lebanon now. And I think that this idea that refugee education is often situated within marginalized national populations is really important as we think about the idea of quality. And I think, in particular, it points to areas within national education that are often overlooked. And the kind of possibility of imagining any of these futures that we’re talking about when access to poor quality schooling is the norm. So in Lebanon, for example, refugees have access to the second shift that I was describing in public schools, but only 30% of national students attend public schools, and those with other options will choose other options outside of these public schools. And so, there’s already this sense that a future of integration would be a future of integration into an education system and into a level of society that is not desirable by nationals and is also not something that refugees are looking for.

Will Brehm 22:04
And so, they would continue to be marginalized, even if integrated?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 22:08
In many of the places where refugees are included in national schools, in fact, what we find in most places, is that the quality of education is not high for nationals either. And so while the promise of including refugees in national education systems often comes back to this idea that it might be of higher quality within an already established system with trained teachers, with a sequenced curriculum, that the particular places in which refugees are being included are often within countries that struggle broadly to provide quality education, or within regions of countries, or areas of cities, where the quality of schooling is unequal and in fact, poor quality schooling that refugees are not seeking out either.

Will Brehm 22:53
So, I mean, it seems as if you are beginning to differentiate the idea of “integration”, which, sort of, on the surface sounds quite good. But actually, it’s more … and I think you use this term before in our conversation: of “belongingness”. So, you know, what is this difference between belongingness and integration?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 23:12
I think this really is at the crux of what we get at in this paper. And I think that what we see in the model of including refugees within national education systems is a very important focus on the structures of inclusion. So, as I was saying, the teachers, the curriculum, the certification, but much less focus on what these relational elements of a longer-term integration would mean. And I think it’s important to distinguish here: in almost no cases do we hear from the various actors involved in refugee education that long-term permanent integration is the goal. Even though we know that crises are protracted, in the end, most refugee young people would elect to pursue a future of return or a future of transnationalism. And yet wanting to keep open this possibility of being able to be an active, productive contributor to the society in which they live, which for the immediate term, is a country of exile. So, this idea of belonging really comes back to these relational dimensions: the opportunity to build relationships, to build understanding across lines of difference. And I think that the models of inclusion that we have found within most countries simply don’t even allow the contact among young people to foster this kind of relational dimensions. And even when they do, in cases where refugees and nationals attend schools together, there’s often very little focus within curriculum and pedagogy on these dimensions of relationship that might allow for working through some of the conflicts or the perceived threats that may or may not exist, but when you don’t have that opportunity to know someone as an individual are very hard to overcome.

Will Brehm 25:07
Is there any example where, you know, refugee education was actually able to create such a sense of belongingness?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 25:16
It’s been hard for us to find large-scale examples of this kind of relational integration and belonging. But this idea of belonging has emerged as so important from the work that we’ve been doing that it’s a real focus of our current work. And right now, we’re launching a project that we’re calling the Together Project and studying individual schools in multiple national contexts with large refugee populations that we’re finding to be extraordinarily successful at building welcoming communities among long-time residents and newcomers. And it’s really our hope in this project to be able to identify some of the pedagogies and the processes – these real “how” questions, not the “what” questions – of what schools, teachers, students, families are doing to actively build communities in which there’s a sense of welcome. And I think that this is even more important to me because what we hear from young people and from teachers in all of these national context in which we’ve been working is that they’re looking for ideas of how to do this. It is not a sense of not finding belonging and not finding people who are seeking out the mechanisms to create that. In fact, it would be the number one request that we would hear from teachers, are for sharing ideas about how they could better do their work to create this kind of inclusive communities. So, hoping that through this project, we might be able to identify ways in which there are possibilities within schools that everyone could imagine a future, even if those futures are divergent. Coming back to this idea that it is not just one future, but maybe multiple futures pursued within any form of education.

Will Brehm 27:01
It’s really quite fascinating. I mean, it does remind me of some of the work of Benedict Anderson and really pushing issues of imagined communities a bit further. It’s imagined future communities that are, you know, in many ways, diverse and transnational. And it really sort of is this new idea, I think, that has to be sort of theorized and, you know, researched quite heavily.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 27:26
I think that is right. And it brings me back to thinking about the history of refugee education to in the post-war, and particularly through the 60s and 70s, refugee education was really a very localized endeavor. So communities creating their own schools to educate refugees, often with this real sense of self-determination, because many refugees were in exile due to independence struggles, and a very clear sense that the future for which refugees were being prepared would be to return to a country of origin and take up leadership roles in a post-independence place. And we saw a lot of transnationalism at that time too, which I think is resurfacing as really critical as we think about what these imagined communities are that may actually look quite different from what we see now, and how education can, in fact, attempt to remake these kinds of communities and allow individuals to imagine what they might look like. And hopefully, over the long run, break down some of the structural barriers, particularly around abilities to migrate and abilities to work and to actually tangibly take up the rights that we think of as universal to be able to pursue these futures.

Will Brehm 28:48
And so, you know, given your research and your analysis of the history plus this Together Project that you’re beginning to work on, you know, what sort of policy proposals have you and your team sort of begun to think about, or realize, are really important for successful refugee education that sort of does contribute to this idea of belongingness?

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 29:15
I think what comes out of our work is the real need to focus on more of the relational dimensions of education. So, making sure that we do think about quality not just as that form of access to a national system, but what actually happens in classrooms in terms of curriculum, in terms of pedagogy. And the new UNHCR strategy, Inclusion 2030, really advocates for this shift in thinking more about the daily teaching and learning that goes on. But they’re very hard challenges, as we all know, and particularly within national education systems that struggle to meet the needs of national students. And I think what comes out for us quite heavily is this is a real collective challenge. That, in fact, when we think about the purposes of refugee education, what we expose are areas in which the global movement to provide quality education for all, in fact, has obviously left out many national students. And the places in which refugees are attempting to access education are also places where nationals don’t have access to that kind of a quality education. So, thinking about refugee education not in isolation, but as the real collective challenge of ensuring that all marginalized young people have access to a quality education. And one of the initiatives that we’re launching, connected to this, is called refugee REACH: research, education, and action for change and hope. This is an initiative of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and we’re really trying to think about ways to connect researchers, policymakers, and educators in collective thinking about quality education and building welcoming communities in settings of migration and displacement. We’ll be launching this initiative next month to coincide with the Global Refugee Forum, and one of the elements of it that I’m particularly excited about is a series of virtual conversations on some of these critical dilemmas in refugee education, research, in policy, and in practice that we’ve been talking about today. My hope is really that collectively, through these ongoing conversations, that we can develop ways to educate so education doesn’t stand in the way of refugees’ futures, but instead can create concrete spaces for weaving together the success of all of our futures.

Will Brehm 31:40
Well, Sarah Dryden-Peterson, thank you so much for joining FreshEd again. Best of luck in the conference next month, and please come back on and share some of these… the learning that happens with these different projects that you have going on. So, thank you very much again for joining.

Sarah Dryden-Peterson 31:56
Thanks so much, Will.

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Some thirty-five percent of out-of-school children live in conflict-affected areas. These emergency situations include both human conflicts, such as, war and natural disasters, such as earthquakes. These children are in desperate need of help. Yet before anyone can act, information is critical. Information and data on education in emergencies is, however, inadequate in most cases.

My guest today is  Mary Mendenhall, an Associate Professor of Practice and the Director of the International and Comparative Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a member of the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies’ (INEE) Standards and Practice Working Group and has edited a new NORRAG special issue on data collection and evidence building to support education in emergencies.

Citation: Mendenhall, Mary, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 158, podcast audio, June 10, 2019. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/marymendenhall/

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Today we bring you a special episode of FreshEd. With me is Manos Antoninis, the Director of the Global Education Monitoring Report, which was just released.

Each year, UNESCO publishes an editorially-independent Global Education Monitoring Report to monitor the progress towards the education targets in the Sustainable Development Goals. This year’s topic is migration, displacement, and education.

Based on evidence from around the world, the report argues that investing in the education of mobile people can actually create cohesion and peace. Of course, there are many challenges facing children, teachers, policymakers, and society from the displacement and migration of large numbers of people.

The 2019 report is entitled Migration, Displacement, and Education: Building Bridges, not Walls and is available online now.

Citation: Antoninis, Manos, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 136, podcast audio, November 20, 2018. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/antoninis/

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Tunisia is known for sparking what many in the West call the Arab Spring, the revolutionary protests that swept across North Africa and the Middle East starting in 2010.

My guest today is Tavis Jules. Together with Teresa Barton, he co-authored a new book entitled

Educational Transitions in post-revolutionary spaces: Islam, security, and social movements in Tunisia. He argues that the Tunisian revolution had everything to do with education.

In our conversation, we discuss the history leading up to the 2010 protests that would peacefully toppled the president as well as the fallout 7 years later.

Tavis Jules is an Associate Professor of Cultural and Educational Policy Studies at Loyola University Chicago.

Citation: Jules, Tavis, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 111, podcast audio, April 9, 2018. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/tavisdjules/

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OverviewTranscriptترجمةFrançais TranscriptionResources

Across the globe, millions of people have been displaced from their homes. How does the international community respond to this humanitarian crisis? What is the role of education?

My guest today is Sarah Dryden-Peterson. She leads a research program that focuses on the connections between education and community development, specifically the role that education plays in building peaceful and participatory societies, particularly in conflict and post-conflict settings. She is concerned with the interplay between local experiences of children, families, and teachers and the development and implementation of national and international policy.

Sarah has recently written an article entitled “Refugee education: Education for an unknowable future” in a special issue of the journal Curriculum Inquiry that rethinks refugee education

Sarah Dryden-Peterson is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

She taught middle school in Boston, founded non-profits in South Africa and Uganda, and has two school-aged children.

Citation: Dryden-Peterson, Sarah, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 94, podcast audio, November 6, 2017. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/sarahdrydenpeterson/

Will Brehm  2:07
Sarah Dryden Peterson, welcome to FreshEd.

Sarah Dryden Peterson  2:09
Thanks so much Will. Thanks for having me.

Will Brehm  2:11
So can you describe the the current state of refugees around the world right now?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  2:17
Of course. We hear this word a lot these days – “refugee”. And just before we started, I wanted to say a little word about this word. Some of the people I work with really embrace the term refugee and some reject it. And I think as with all labels, it really depends on how we use it, how it’s co-opted, or in many cases, employed to really disempower and exclude people. When I use the term refugee, I’m really using it with the intent of harkening back to this core idea of seeking refuge and sanctuary and belonging. We know that the number of refugees globally right now is at the highest level in recorded history. In 2016, there were total of 22 and a half million people living as refugees worldwide. And in 2016, 3.4 million of those individuals were newly displaced to become refugees. So we also see an increase in the number of people becoming refugees.

At the same time, many people have lived as refugees in exile for many years, even many decades. For example, from conflicts in Afghanistan, or Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia. I also think another really important dimension of thinking about the current state of refugees worldwide is that 84% of refugees live in exile in countries that neighbor their conflict-affected countries of origin. So for example, in 2016, more than 1.4 million primarily Afghan refugees lived in Pakistan, and almost a million in Iran. We know that almost 3 million primarily Syrian refugees were living in Turkey, and a million in Lebanon, and almost a million primarily South Sudanese refugees living in Uganda and in Ethiopia. So while our media in North America and Europe can often have us believe that the refugee crisis is something that is happening where we are in North America and Europe, the reality is that most refugees live very close to their country of origin, and often in host countries that are already overstretched in terms of providing education to citizens within those countries.

Will Brehm  4:51
Okay, so there are more people at any time in history seeking refuge. Most of the people, the vast majority of these people are in neighboring countries from where they are from, and you’re saying that people are being displaced for decades?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  5:09
That’s right. In fact, the average length of exile is 17 years. And when we think about this, it really is the whole span of a child’s education. So whereas most individual refugees and families believe that they will quickly return to their country of origin, and hope that that’s the case, the reality is that most people will be displaced for many years. And the uncertainty of that really affects the way we think about the situation of refugees, including how refugees are educated.

Will Brehm  5:49
Right. And so there must be refugees that when they are seeking refuge in neighboring countries are also having families and they have to settle into a particular life. I mean 17 years is a huge amount of time.

Sarah Dryden Peterson  6:09
That’s right. Many of the refugees, students and families that we have worked with in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, for example, were born in Dadaab. And so the kinds of rhetoric around refugees going home, in reality for many young people, a return to their parents’ country of origin is a return to a place that they have never known.

Will Brehm  6:40
And is home a refugee camp, or are they living in, you know, the cities and other places in these neighboring countries?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  6:52
So, both. There continue to be refugee camps, but more than half of refugees live in urban areas. And in many ways, this depends on the country of exile. There are some countries that have policies that refugees must live in camp settings, but in many places, refugees are living in urban areas, amid national populations, and seeking access to the kinds of livelihoods that they had in their countries of origin. And I think this reflects also the urbanization globally, so that many refugees are coming from cities and are going to cities as well in order to attempt to build their lives. And I think this comes back to the point that we were talking about before that if exile is to be protracted, then it really is about building a life in the place where one is living, and that includes being able to practice the kinds of occupations that people had before they fled into exile, and being able to create the conditions in which they can educate their children and build toward a future much as that is uncertain.

Will Brehm  8:16
So the UN has a body that works on, or tries to help refugees. What sort of solutions are they proposing for this massive issue, as you’ve explained?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  8:30
The UNHCR education strategy that began in 2012, and which I was involved with the drafting of, emphasized integrating refugees’ into national education systems, and this was a real shift from refugees being educated mostly in parallel systems. This integration really envisioned a pathway to the future that responded to the very lengthy exile that most refugees experiences. The policy has put in place some important structures like the recognition of refugee children and young people within the national education space. Before the strategy was started, UNHCR had no formal relationships with national authorities in education in refugee hosting countries. By 2015, there were relationships but in 20 of the 25 largest refugee hosting states. So this kind of formality and recognition that refugees are here and need to be considered in terms of what goes on with education in the nation state. Now that this policy is in place, we are turning our attention to the ways in which refugee children and young people experience that policy.

One of the most important questions I think, in refugee education that relates to how we think about global bodies working on these issues, is trying to imagine what kinds of futures refugees are preparing for, given this kind of uncertainty that we’ve talked about. So the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is UNHCR, the global body that you mentioned, has the mandate to provide assistance to refugees and to ensure their protection in exile, and UNHCR outlines three possible, what are called “durable solutions” for refugees; this idea of a situation that could signal an end to the kind of persecution that led to flight in the first place. One durable solution is resettlement to a distant country. So in the article we see Bauma Benjamin at the end being resettled to Canada from Uganda, his country of origin being Democratic Republic of Congo. This resettlement option is really only accessible to less than 1% of refugees globally, but it is one possible durable solution that way. A second durable solution being a return to the country of origin. And a third possible durable solution being long-term integration in the host country. And one of the things that that I have been focusing on is how these possible pathways to the future or durable solutions really play out in terms of refugee education. These three pathways in many ways are geographically bounded, so they focus on which nation state the future will be situated in.

What we find is that this approach that really focuses on the nation state doesn’t always reflect the transnational ways in which refugees are seeking educational opportunities, seeking economic opportunities, and seeking social opportunities. So in our work we’ve really been conceptualizing four pathways to the future, the three durable solutions that UNHCR outlines and a transnational pathway to the future. And as we think about what these pathways to the future really mean for a refugee child, or a young person trying to create their life, we think about resettlement. This is a process where a refugee would leave one country of exile, having received asylum in that country, and then move to a more distant country, which is, in the case of resettlement, usually a country with a high gross national income per capita. So it’s usually countries in North America or in Europe. And this resettlement process comes with a kind of certainty that the other pathways to the future really don’t. And in particular, it comes with a pathway to citizenship that is not available for most refugees globally. So in many ways, refugees will often perceive resettlement as the kind of ultimate future, especially in terms of educational possibilities for their children. But as I mentioned, less than 1% of refugees are able to access resettlement. So another possible pathway to the future that is connected to the kind of solutions you mentioned, is to prepare young people for a return to the country of origin. And historically, the purpose of refugee education has been aligned with this pathway to the future. So thinking about educating refugees, so that they would be prepared to return to their country of origin after a time in exile. But I think what is critical about the situation we find ourselves in currently is that return to a country of origin is increasingly unlikely, especially in the short term. So if we know that the length of exile is protracted, it means that we need to think differently about what education looks like in terms of pursuing this pathway to an eventual return, not an immediate return.

Sometimes education that imagines this future as a return to the country of origin could in fact, place young people and children at a disadvantage by barring opportunities in the country of exile, a place where they may be for an extended amount of time. So lack of ability to communicate in the language in the country of exile, or lack of understanding about the ways in which systems and structures work in that country, in order to pursue various kinds of opportunities. On the other hand, we often find that refugee children and families are seeking a real connection to their country of origin, even if they are displaced for an extended amount of time to provide some kind of educational continuity with their previous experiences, and also to stay connected through cultural and community linkages that way.

A third possible pathway to the future is this kind of transnational situation that I mentioned. And I think unlike durable solutions that are premised on migrations stopping, this pathway really centers on opportunities that could be created by continuous migration, which is often prompted by refugees’ searches for long-term and stable opportunities. And we see increasingly in conversations with refugee children and young people that they are imagining and planning for a transnational life, even if they don’t know exactly what that would look like. This idea of a transnational pathway, in some ways, can allow a middle ground of individuals being able to continue their attachment to their home community and country of origin, even when they’re displaced in a country of exile. So indicating the need to maintain language and culture of the country of origin through education that could allow individuals to return, but leaving open other possibilities for a transnational life. What we see as particularly challenging is that while in their envisionings, refugee children and young people may seek this kind of transnational pathway, in many situations, there are clear restrictions that bar refugees from moving from one place to another, or even within a country of exile, barred from work, from civil and political participation. So being able to imagine in the abstract a situation in which opportunities could be pursued in multiple places but in fact, instead coming up with bars to that participation in all directions.

Will Brehm  17:19
And literal bars, right? I mean, in some of these refugee camps, for instance, there are fences and bars. I’m thinking of, for instance, Manus Island, which is where Australia is basically putting all of the people seeking refuge into their country, and there’s literal bars around these camps where the refugees have to live. And so, you know, I would imagine that imagining a transnational future would be rather challenging.

Sarah Dryden Peterson  17:52
That’s right. In many places around the world, we see refugees physically barred from entering into a national space, or a transnational space. And in reality, having the clear message that their future is nowhere. For refugee education, I think that there is also a way in which we see these bars being erected somewhat more invisibly, but perhaps just as importantly. So the strategy of integrating refugees into national education systems has been a clear priority from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since the 2012 – 2016 Education Strategy. And what we see globally is the strategy being applied in different country contexts. So as wherein 2011, there were very few countries in which refugees could go to a national school, we now see the UNHCR having clear relationships with ministries of education in most of the nation states that are hosting refugees, and refugees having some type of integration to a national system. So I just like to give some examples of that before going into what I think are some of the bars that refugees face, even if they’re not literal bars.
So in research that we have been doing over the past several years, we really see three types of integration of refugees into national schools. The first is, in fact, no integration; in situations where refugees are not permitted to attend schools that nationals attend, and where we see refugees having a kind of parallel education. So this is the case in Bangladesh, for example, and in Malaysia, where there are schools that are set up for refugees, but only for refugees. And in most cases, focused on imagining a pathway to the future that either is a return to the country of origin, or a pathway towards a life outside of that country of exile. In situations where we do see refugees and nationals both in national schools, that’s really split also. So in some countries, we see refugees integrated to a national system. So following the same national curriculum in the national language of instruction, with access to the same exams that national students would write at the end of primary school and secondary school, but separated from nationals in terms of whether they actually see each other in the same classroom. And we see this separation being geographic in cases where there are refugee camps. So in Kenya, for example, that refugees are following the Kenyan curriculum in English and Kiswahili, taking primary and secondary school leaving exams, but they are isolated for the most part in camp settings, where there are only refugees in the schools. So we see that geographic separation despite the integration to the system. We also in some cases, see temporal segregation of refugees, of separation of refugees, even despite the integration to the system. So in Lebanon, for example, there are two shifts where refugees attend an afternoon shift, and nationals attend a morning shift. So they are following the same curriculum, usually with the same teachers, in the same language with the same access to a process of examination, but they’re not physically together in class. And then the third model of integration is where refugees and nationals are physically together in schools. So we see this often in urban areas in places like Uganda and Ethiopia, as well as in a place like Egypt, where Syrians are studying together with Egyptian nationals following the same curriculum with the same teachers.

And through this integration to the national system, I think has made visible some of the bars that refugees face that are not the physical bars. So we see refugees accessing a national system of education, following the national curriculum, sitting in some cases, side by side with national students, but not having the same kinds of opportunities outside of the school structure. So by that I mean that refugee students will graduate from primary school or secondary school, and then not have the right to work, or not have the right to participate in the community, or not have a kind of permanence in that country of exile that would allow them to invest in starting a business or in creating that kind of livelihood. So I think that, while the inclusion of refugees in national systems is an incredibly important message that tries to tear down some of those bars that we see globally, there’s also the kinds of bars that are erected through an experience that promises a kind of belonging and inclusion, but then a society in which refugees are struggling to be able to pursue the kinds of opportunities that they’re seeking.

Will Brehm  24:03
So in this second model of integration, where it’s integrated, but it’s separated either geographically or temporarily, why? Why is there a separation? I mean, is it just simply practical reasons like they’re geographically far away, or is there other underlying issues at play as well?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  24:28
I think that there are three real reasons for thinking about integration of refugees into national schools. And then that these models of separation kind of play into that. So the first is that integration of refugees into a national education system can increase access to formal schooling. And this connects clearly to the global commitment to universal education, with the Education For All declaration, the Millennium Development Goals, and the Sustainable Development Goals. And thinking about already existing education systems, which refugees can access, because they would be less likely to face the common barriers of lack of access to school buildings, or limited number of teachers, or a high per child cost that have been addressed through systems. That would not be the case of parallel schools were set up for refugees. I think the second rationale for this integration is to increase the quality of refugee education, which is also a clear global goal. And the focus on quality, both for refugees and for nationals, I think really reflects this notion that the pathway to the future – be that economic, political, social – is really connected to the kinds of skills and capacities that children can learn and apply then no matter where that future would be. So the rationale then would be that refugee education could be of higher quality within a national system, because there is an existing curriculum that can be followed, that there are trained teachers, and that there’s a possibility of certification. Of some way of recognizing that education has been completed, and that can be used as a signal to further education or employment.

However, I think the challenge is that the quality of education within a national system can be low, as is the case in many refugee hosting countries. And so for example, if we take the case of Lebanon, less than 20% of Lebanese nationals access public schools in Lebanon. The real push in Lebanon is to include refugees within the national education system, within public schools. And there are really clear reasons to think about how this could increase access to education for refugees; could provide some kind of stable continuity during a protracted exile;  could provide access to certification. And then there are real challenges related to the quality of education in an already existing system, let alone with an influx that has increased the population in schools serving refugees, sometimes by more than half. And this is not a challenge that’s unique to refugee education. And I think this is where it’s useful to reframe our thinking about refugee education as not just about a particular population, but really as about making visible the kinds of challenges that marginalized national populations are experiencing as well. And the the third kind of rationale for integrating refugees into national schools is that it might be enable a kind of belonging in the society of long-term exile, a feeling of security or connection, and freedom from discrimination. But these models of integration that are really premised on a separation – what we find in Kenya, for example, is that students feel that connection to a national system, and the kind of promise of trained teachers and sitting for national exams, that then is in tension with their experience of being isolated in overcrowded classrooms, in places where there are no economic opportunities and so they can’t see their education leading into that. And so on the one hand, this promise of belonging and long-term certainty through education. And on the other hand, this tension of an experience that actually sends a message of isolation and exclusion.

Will Brehm  29:03
So one of the things that I love about your work is that you’re able to bring together these larger system, structural issues of refugees and refugee education, but you also bring these issues to life by kind of in-depth looks at at individuals, and what they had to go through, and one of the people we meet in your work is named Bauma Benjamin, and what was his sort of pathways to the future, right? How did he imagine education working for his imagined future?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  29:38
One of the ways in which I think that my work has shifted over time, and in some ways mirroring the ways in which I hope that thinking about refugee education is understanding long-term trajectories of individuals who are living in conflict settings. I feel like too often we’re focused on one moment in time, and are not able to see this longer term trajectory. So you you mentioned here Bauma Benjamin, who I write about in this article, and really focus on because I think that his experience shed light on some of the bigger structural issues that we’ve just been talking about. Bauma was born in Democratic Republic of Congo. He did his teacher training in the DRC. But he was arrested for his human rights work. And he fled to Uganda, where he felt like there was no possibility to continue the kind of trajectory that he had been building as a teacher, as a husband, as an about-to-be-father. When he got to Uganda, he was sent to live in a refugee camp that was in an isolated area of the country where the theory of how refugees could subsist in this area was that they could grow their own food and create a subsistence life. He had never farmed before. So he was given a hoe and a piece of land to grow his own food, but he had no experience with that. So he and his wife and their young child decided to move from the camp setting to the city in order to pursue his livelihood and what he describes as his real passion of teaching.

And what he found when he got to Kampala was that there were thousands of refugee children who did not have the ability to go to school. And when he had been trained as a teacher in Democratic Republic of Congo, he had understood and really come to live this philosophy of: if you arrive in the middle of a forest and all you have are trees and children, then it is your job to figure out a way to teach those children. And this kind of metaphor made sense in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where there were vast forests. When he got to to Kampala, he described the city as his forest in that way. But these thousands of children who were unable to go to school, and it was his responsibility to figure out how they could get an education. I remember one day asking him, “What’s your goal for this school?” And he wrote down on a piece of paper, “Ensure for our children a basic education to prepare them for their future lives.” And I’ve kept that piece of paper that he wrote on, and I think that this in some ways, this goal was a way for him to both look back to his own trajectory and look forward to his own children and his students’ trajectories. And the way that he thought about preparing them for their future lives was really in thinking about the role that he could play as their teacher.

And Bauma had this school in many different spaces. It was originally in someone’s home, so the school couldn’t start until everybody was up and out of the house. And then it was in the space of a church and then within a national Ugandan school, but every day as the children came to this school, no matter where it was, Bauma would look at them and think about the kind of future that he saw they might inherit if he didn’t help them to think about how to create home and how to really cultivate the ways in which they might disrupt the exclusion that they were experiencing as refugees in Uganda. Every day, the students would come to school and and tell him and tell me as a researcher in this situation, that they were called names that their parents couldn’t find jobs that they had tried to go to Uganda national schools, but we’re not able to access them, and in many ways, telling us stories about how they couldn’t even imagine how to create their futures. A few of the ways in which Bauma acted as their teacher to work on helping them to imagine their futures was first to call every student by their name. And this may seem like a really simple small element, but children who were called names that were not their own – and not nice names – in the street, or who were not able to be recognized for who they were, in terms of their identity, culturally, socially, linguistically, in a new place. Being called by their name was filled with meaning. He also taught them both about peace, but also about war. And what we often see in refugee education is an avoidance of some of the really contentious issues because there is no easy resolution, and there may be many conflicting sides to a particular conflict of kids and families within one school. But what Bauma saw was that these children who would come to his school every day, were thinking about war, because they had experienced it. And they were thinking about what their identities were, and what the power structures around them were. And that avoidance of those topics was, in fact, teaching them that they had no power to act within them. And so Bauma felt it his responsibility to help the children think through those issues, even if they caused contentious situations within the classroom, to work through them.

He also included poor Ugandans, who at that time did not have access to primary school, in the school that he had started for refugees. And in that way, created a community where refugees and nationals who were both excluded in different ways could come together to build a learning community. And in many ways, it was that community of learning and a community of belonging that Bauma sought to create and was able to create, and really show to the children and families that they didn’t have to live this life of uncertainty, but could in fact, build a home and a future right there in that moment. And I think what was important about the work that he did was that it wasn’t blind to the kinds of structural barriers that the refugee children and families would continue to face. It wasn’t blind to the fact that most would not have the opportunity to work even if they graduated from school. And so trying to think through with them how they could create new opportunities, and imagine what role they might play in trying to address some of the exclusion rather than isolating themselves from it. And as we think about education, this idea of an unknowable future shapes the way that we can think about and understand the quality of the options available. I think the reality is that every day policymakers, teachers and kids need to make decisions about the curriculum that refugees will follow, the language in which they’ll be taught, the kind of certification that they will receive, and the types of schools that in the end can prepare them for the uncertainty. For work, for life in both the present and the future, as unknowable as that future might be.

Will Brehm  38:14
Well, Sarah Dryden Peterson, thank you so much for joining FreshEd; it’s just such a fascinating topic, and I just want to thank you for all the work you’ve been doing on it.

Sarah Dryden Peterson  38:23
Thanks so much Will, it’s been such a pleasure to talk with you.

ويل بريهم:سارة درايدن بيترسن، أهلًا بيكي في برنامج فريش إيد

سارة درايدن بيترسن:متشكرة جدًا يا ويل. وشكرًا لاستضافتكم

ويل بريهم:ممكن توصفي الوضع الحالي للاجئين في كل أنحاء العالم؟

سارة درايدن بيترسن: طبعًا. احنا بنسمع كلمة “لاجئ” كتير جدًا هذه الأيام. لكن قبل ما نبدأ، عايزة أقول كلمة صغيرة عن هذا العالم. بعض الناس اللي بشتغل معاهم بيقبلوا مصطلح “لاجيء” والبعض يرفضوه. وأنا أعتقد كما هو الحال في كل المصطلحات، أن الأمر يعتمد على كيفية استخدامنا للمصطلح أو كيفية مشاركته، في حالات كتير، بيستخدم لعزل الناس واستبعادهم. لما باستخدم مصطلح “لاجيء”، أنا فعلًا باستخدمه بقصد الرجوع للفكرة الأساسية المتمثلة في البحث عن الملجأ والحماية والانتماء. احنا عارفين إن عدد اللاجئين عالميًا الآن هو في أعلى مستوى في التاريخ. في سنة 2016، أصبح عدد اللاجئين الكلي 22 ونص مليون في العالم. هذا العدد بيحتوي على 3.4 مليون تم تهجيرهم حديثًا ليصبح هذا هو إجمالي عدد اللاجئين في عام 2016. وهذا معناه زي ما احنا شايفين ان هناك زديادة كبيرة في عدد الناس اللي بيبقوا لاجئين.

في نفس الوقت، ناس كتير عاشوا كلاجئين لسنين كتيرة أو لعشرات السنين. على سبيل المثال، هناك زيادة بسبب الصراعات في أفغانستان، وجمهورية الكونغو الديموقراطية، والصومال. هناك بُعد تاني مهم جدًا للتفكير في الوضع الحالي للاجئين في جميع أنحاء العالم وهو أن 84% من اللاجئين بيعيشوا في معسكرات اللاجئين في الدولالمجاورة لبلدانهم الأصلية المتأثرة بالصراع. على سبيل المثال، في سنة 2016، كان أكثر من 1.4 مليون لاجئ أفغاني بيعيشوا في باكستان، وما يقرب من مليون في إيران. واحنا عارفين أن حوالي 3 مليون لاجئ سوري كانوا بيعيشوا في تركيا، ومليون في لبنان، وحوالي مليون لاجئ من جنوب السودان بيعيشوا في أوغندا وإثيوبيا. علشان كدا، في حين أن وسائل الإعلام في أمريكا الشمالية وأوروبا بإمكانها تجعلنا نعتقد في كتير من الأحيان إن أزمة اللاجئين هي أمر بيحصل كمان في أمريكا الشمالية وأوروبا، إلا أن الحقيقة هي أن معظم اللاجئين بيعيشوا بالقرب من بلدهم الأصلي، وغالبًا في البلدان المضيفة اللي بتعاني بالفعل من إرهاق من حيث توفير التعليم للمواطنين داخل هذه البلاد.

ويل بريهم: تمام. هناكناس في كل وقت بيبحثوا على ملجأ. ومعظم هؤلاء الناس أو الأغلبية العظمى منهم موجودين في دول مجاورة.  من أين جاءوا وحضرتك بتقول أن هؤلاء الناس اتهجروا من عشرات السنين؟

سارة درايدن بيترسن: هذا صحيح. في الحقيقة، متوسط طول مدة اللجوء بيكون حوالي 17 سنة. ولما نفكر في هذا، هنعرف أن هذه هي الفترة الكاملة لتعليم الأطفال. في حين أن معظم اللاجئين والعائلات بيعتقدوا أنهم هيرجعوا بسرعة لدولهم الأصلية، ونأمل أن يكون هذا ما يحصل، إلا أن الواقع هو أن معظم الناس بيتم تهجيرهم لمدة سنين كتيرة. وكون أننا مش متأكدين من هذا فبيأثر على طريقة تفكيرنا في أوضاع اللاجئين، بما في ذلك كيفية تعليمهم.

ويل بريهم: تمام. علشان كدا أكيد هناك لاجئين لما بيلجأوا للدول المجاورة بيكون معاهم عائلات لازم يستقروا. بس 17 سنة مدة طويلة جدًا.

سارة درايدن بيترسن: هذا صحيح. كتير من اللاجئين والطلاب والعائلات اللي اشتغلنا معهم في مخيم داداب للاجئين في كينيا على سبيل المثال ولدوا في داداب. والمطالبات بخصوص عودتهم لأوطانهم ولبلد أبائهم وأصولهم، في الواقع بالنسبة لكتير من الشباب الصغير، هي بمثابة عودة لمكان جديد عليهم ولا يعرفونه تمامًا.

ويل بريهم: وهل المساكن اللي عايشين فيها في البلدان المجاورة عبارة عن مخيمات للاجئين، واللا بيعيشوا في المدن وأماكن تانية؟

سارة درايدن بيترسن: الاثنين. مازالت هناك مخيمات للاجئين، لكن أكتر من نصف اللاجئين بيعيشوا في المناطق الحضرية. وهذا يعتمد من نواحي كتيرة على بلد الملجأ. هناك بعض البلاد اللي ليها سياسات أن اللاجئين لازم يعيشوا في مخيمات، لكن في أماكن كتيرة، اللاجئين بيعيشوا في المناطق الحضرية، وسط شعب الدولة نفسها وبيسعوا أن يكون ليهم سبل العيش اللي كانوا متمتعين بها في بلادهم الأصلية. وأنا أعتقد أن هذا يعكس كمان التحضر على مستوى العالم، علشان كدا كتير من اللاجئين بييجوا من مدن ويروحوا مدن أخرى في محاولة لان يبنوا حياتهم من جديد. وأنا أعتقد أن هذا يرجعنا للنقطة اللي كنا بنتكلم فيها قبل ذلك، وهي إذا كان الاغتراب بيكون لمدة طويلة، فالأمر بيكون متعلق ببناء حياة في المكان اللي بيعيشوا فيه، وهذا يتضمن القدرة على ممارسة أنواع المهن اللي كانوا بيمارسوها قبل الاغتراب، وقدرتهم على خلق الظروف اللي يقدروا يعلموا فيها أولادهم ويبنوا مستقبلهم.

ويل بريهم: إذًا الأمم المتحدة عندها هيئة بتعمل على أو بتحاول مساعدة اللاجئين. أيه نوع الحلول اللي بيقترحوها لهذه القضية الضخمة، زي ما حضرتك وضحتي؟

سارة درايدن بيترسن: استراتيجية التعليم للمفوضية السامية للأمم المتحدة لشؤون اللاجئين واللي بدأت في سنة 2012 واللي أنا اشتركت في صياغتها، أكدت على دمج اللاجئين في نظم التعليم الوطنية، وكان هذا تحول حقيقي من إن اللاجئين كانوا بيتعلموا غالبًا في نظم موازية. هذا الدمج وضع تصور للطريق نحو المستقبل يستجيب لطول مدة الاغتراب الطويلة جدًا اللي بيختبرها معظم اللاجئين. هذهالسياسة وضعت بعض الهياكل المهمة مثل الاعتراف بالأطفال والشباب اللاجئين داخل نطاق التعليم الوطني. قبل بداية الاستراتيجية، مكنش للمفوضية علاقات رسمية مع السلطات الوطنية في مجال التعليم في البلدان المضيفة للاجئين. بحلول سنة 2015، كانت هناك علاقات مع 20 دولة من أكبر 25 دولة مضيفة للاجئين. يعتبر هذا نوع من الشكل الرسمي والاعتراف بوجود اللاجئين وضرورة النظر ليهم فيما يتعلق بما يحدث في التعليم على مستوى الدولة. الآن ومع تطبيق هذه السياسة، بدأنا نركز في الوسائل اللي ممكن يختبر من خلالها الأطفال والشباب اللاجئين هذه السياسة. اعتقد أن أحد أهم الأسئلة في تعليم اللاجئين واللي بيتعلق بكيفية تفكيرنا في الهيئات العالمية اللي بتشتغل على هذه القضايا، هو محاولة تخيل ماهو المستقبل اللي بيستعد ليه هؤلاء اللاجئين في ظل هذا النوع من عدم اليقين اللي اتكلمنا عنه؟ علشان كدا مفوضية الأمم المتحدة السامية لشؤون اللاجئين اللي هي UNHCR، الهيئة العالمية التي ذكرتها، عندها تفويض لتقديم المساعدة للاجئين وضمان حمايتهم في المعسكرات، وبتحدد المفوضية 3 حلول ممكنة، ما يسمى بـ “الحلول الدائمة” للاجئين. هذه الفكرة قد تشير في المقام الأول إلى نهاية هذا النوع من الاضطهاد اللي أدى للهروب. أحد الحلول الدائمة هو إعادة التوطين في بلد آخر بعيد. علشان كدا في المقالة بنشوف قصة باوما بنيامين اللي في النهاية بيعاد توطينه إلى كندا بدلًا من أوغندا، رغم إن وطنه الأصلي هو جمهورية الكونغو الديمقراطية. خيار إعادة التوطين غير ممكن إلا لأقل من 1٪ من اللاجئين على مستوى العالم، ولكنه أحد الحلول الدائمة الممكنة بهذه الطريقة. الحل الدائم التاني هو العودة إلى الموطن الأصلي. والحل الدائم الثالث المحتمل هو الاندماج طويل الأجل في البلد المضيف. وأحد الأمور اللي كنت بأركز عليها هو كيف يمكن للمسارات الممكنة نحو المستقبل أو هذه الحلول الدائمة أنها بالفعل تتجه ناحية أو لصالح تعليم اللاجئين. هذه المسارات الثلاثة مترابطة جغرافياً بطرق عديدة، علشان كدا بتركز على ما هي الدولة القومية اللي هيكون فيها مستقبل اللاجئ.

اللي اكتشفناه أن هذا النهج اللي بيركز بالفعل على الدولة القومية مش دايمًا بيعكس الطرق العابرة للأوطان اللي بيبحث فيها اللاجئين عن فرص تعليمية وعن فرص اقتصادية وعن فرص اجتماعية.  علشان كدا، في شغلنا صممنا بالفعل أربعة مسارات للمستقبل، الحلول التلاتة الدائمة اللي بتحددها المفوضية كما ذكرنا، بالإضافة لمسار عابر للأوطان نحو المستقبل. وبما أننا بنفكر في معنى هذه المسارات نحو المستقبل بالنسبة لطفل لاجئ أو شاب بيحاول يبدأ حياته، فإحنا بنفكر في إعادة التوطين. هذه العملية بيسيب فيها اللاجئ البلد اللي حصل فيها لجوء، وبيتنقل لبلد أبعد واللي، في حالة إعادة التوطين، عادة ما بتكون بلد ذات دخل قومي إجمالي مرتفع للفرد. علشان كدا عادة ما بتكون هذه البلاد دول في أمريكا الشمالية أو في أوروبا. عملية إعادة التوطين دي بتكون في حالة اليقين بأن المسارات التانية نحو المستقبل مش بتعمل هذا بالفعل. وعلى وجه الخصوص، يتم هذا في حالة أن المسار نحو المواطنة غير متاح لمعظم اللاجئين على مستوى العالم. علشان كدا، من نواح كتيرة، فاللاجئين بيبصوا لإعادة التوطين على أنه نوع من المستقبل النهائي، خاصة فيما يتعلق بالإمكانيات التعليمية لأطفالهم. لكن كما ذكرت، فإن أقل من 1٪ من اللاجئين بيقدروا يوصلوا لإعادة التوطين. علشان كدا هناك طريق محتمل تاني للمستقبل مرتبط بنوع الحلول اللي ذكرتها، وهو إعداد الشباب للعودة لبلدهم الأصلي. وتاريخياً، كان هدف تعليم اللاجئين متوافق مع هذا المسار تجاه المستقبل. علشان كدا التفكير في تعليم اللاجئين، لازم يكون بغرض اعدادهم للعودة لبلدهم الأصلي بعد فترة من وجودهم في دولة الملجأ. لكني أعتقد أن الأمر الحرج بالنسبة للموقف اللي احنا فيه حاليًا هو أن العودة إلى الموطن الأصلي أمر غير مرجح على نحو متزايد، وخصوصًا على المدى القصير. علشان كدا إذا عرفنا أن طول فترة الوجود في دولة الملجأ طالت، فهذا يعني أننا في حاجة للتفكير بشكل مختلف بخصوص شكل التعليم من حيث متابعة هذا المسار بغرض العودة في نهاية المطاف، وليس العودة الفورية.

في بعض الأحيان، قد يؤدي التعليم اللي بيتخيل المستقبل على أنه عودة إلى الموطن الأصلي، في الواقع، إلى وضع الشباب والأطفال في وضع سيء من خلال حظر الفرص في دولة الملجأ، والمكان اللي قد يستمروا فيه لفترة طويلة من الزمن. فبيحصل انعدام للقدرة على التواصل بلغة دولة الملجأ، أو عدم فهم للطرق اللي بتشتغل بها النظم والهياكل في هذه الدولة، يحدث هذا في سبيل السعي لأنواع تانية من الفرص. من ناحية تانية، بنلاقي غالبًا أن الأطفال والعائلات اللاجئة بيسعوا للحصول على اتصال حقيقي ببلدهم الأصلي، حتى لو تم تهجيرهم لفترة طويلة من الوقت، لتوفير نوع من الاستمرارية التعليمية في سياق خبراتهم اللي فاتت، وكمان علشان يستمروا متصلين ببعض من خلال الروابط الثقافية والمجتمعية.

المسار التالت المحتمل للمستقبل هو النوع العابر للأوطان اللي ذكرته من قبل. وأعتقد أنه على عكس الحلول الدائمة اللي بتعتمد على وقف عمليات الترحيل، فهذا المسار بيركز بالفعل على الفرص اللي ممكن تيجي من الهجرة الدائمة، واللي غالباً ما بتكون مدفوعة ببحث اللاجئين عن فرص طويلة الأجل ومستقرة. واحنا بنشوف، بشكل متزايد، في المحادثات مع الأطفال اللاجئين والشباب أنهم بيتخيلوا وبيخططوا لحياة عابرة للأوطان، حتى لو كانوا مش عارفين بالضبط كيف سيكون هذا. فكرة المسار العابر للوطن، في بعض النواحي، يمكن أنها تتيح حل وسط للأفراد القادرين على مواصلة ارتباطهم بمجتمعهم اللي عايشين فيه وبلدهم الأصلي، حتى لو كانوا مهجرين في دولة ملجأ. فالإشارة للحاجة للحفاظ على لغة وثقافة الموطن الأصلي من خلال التعليم ممكن تسمح للأفراد بالعودة، مع ترك إمكانيات تانية مفتوحة لحياة عابرة للأوطان. اللي بنشوفه تحدي بشكل خاص هو أنه بينما في تصوراتهم، قد يبحث الأطفال والشباب اللاجئين على هذا النوع من المسار عبر الأوطان، إلا أنه، في كثير من الحالات، بيكون فيه قيود واضحة بتمنع اللاجئين من الانتقال من مكان لآخر، أو حتى داخل دولة الملجأ بيكونوا ممنوعين من العمل ومن المشاركة المدنية والسياسية. تقدر تتخيل بصورة مجردة الموقف اللي فيه يمكن توفير الفرص في أماكن كتيرة، ولكن في الواقع، بدلاً من هذا، بيتم وضع حواجز في جميع الاتجاهات.

ويل بريهم: حواجز حرفية، صح؟ أقصد، في بعض مخيمات اللاجئين، على سبيل المثال، بيكون فيه أسوار وحواجز. أنا بفكر، على سبيل المثال، في جزيرة مانوس، واللي فيها تضع أستراليا بشكل أساسي كل الأشخاص اللي بيلتمسوا اللجوء إلى بلدهم، وفيها حواجز حرفية حول المخيمات اللي بيعيش فيها اللاجئين. وعلشان كدا، أنا بأتصور أن تخيل مستقبل عبر وطني هيكون تحدي صعب نوعًا ما .

سارة درايدن بيترسن: هذا صحيح. في أماكن كتير حول العالم، بنشوف لاجئين ممنوعين جسديًا من الدخول إلى حيز دولة ما أو حيز منطقة عابرة للأوطان. وفي الواقع، بيعبر هذا عن وجود رسالة واضحة ليهم مفادها أن مستقبلهم ليس في أي مكان. بالنسبة لتعليم اللاجئين، أعتقد أن فيه كمان طريقة بنشوف من خلالها هذه الحواجز بيتم بناؤها بشكل غير مرئي إلى حد ما، ولكن ربما بنفس القدر من الأهمية. علشان كدا استراتيجية دمج اللاجئين في أنظمة التعليم الوطنية كانت أولوية واضحة لمفوضية الأمم المتحدة السامية لشؤون اللاجئين من وقت خطة التعليم للفترة من 2012 إلى 2016. واللي بنشوفه عالميًا هو أن هذه الإستراتيجية بيتم تطبيقها في سياقات دول مختلفة. علشان كدا، في سنة 2011، كان هناك عدد قليل جدًا من الدول اللي يمكن للاجئين فيها الالتحاق بمدرسة وطنية، إلا أنه الآن بنشوف أن المفوضية لها علاقات واضحة مع وزارات التعليم في معظم الدول اللي بتستضيف اللاجئين، واللاجئين بيتمتعوا بنوع من الاندماج في النظام الوطني. عايزه أقدم بعض الأمثلة على هذا قبل الخوض في الأمور اللي بعتقد أنها حواجز بيواجهها اللاجئين، حتى لو ماكنتش حواجز حرفية.

في الأبحاث اللي أحنا عملناها على مدار السنين القليلة اللي فاتت، رأينا بالفعل ثلاث أنواع من دمج اللاجئين في المدارس الوطنية. الأول هو، في الواقع، عدم دمج. وهذا نراه في الأوضاع اللي مش بيُسمح فيها للاجئين بالالتحاق بالمدارس اللي بيرتادها المواطنين، واللي فيها اللاجئين بيحصلوا على نوع من التعليم الموازي. هذا هو الحال في بنغلاديش، على سبيل المثال، وفي ماليزيا، واللي فيها مدارس مخصصة للاجئين، وللاجئين فقط. وفي معظم الحالات، بيتم التركيز على تصور طريق للمستقبل إما أن يكون العودة إلى الموطن الأصلي، أو طريق لحياة خارج دولة الملجأ. في الأوضاع اللي بنشوف فيها اللاجئين والمواطنين في المدارس الوطنية، بيكون فيه نوع من التمييز كمان. علشان كدا في بعض البلدان، بنشوف اللاجئين مدمجين في نظام وطني وبيتبعوا نفس المنهج الوطني في لغة التعليم الوطنية، مع إمكانية اجتياز نفس الامتحانات التي بيجتازها الطلاب الوطنيين في نهاية المدرسة الابتدائية والثانوية، لكنهم بيكونوا منفصلين عن التلاميذ الوطنيين من حيث ما إذا كانوا بيشوفوا بعض في نفس قاعة الدراسة. واحنا بنشوف هذا الفصل بين التلاميذ يحدث جغرافيا في الأماكن اللي فيها مخيمات للاجئين. في كينيا، على سبيل المثال، بيتبع اللاجئين المنهج الكيني باللغتين الإنجليزية والسواحيلية، وبيخضعوا لامتحانات التخرج من المدارس الابتدائية والثانوية، لكنهم معزولين في الغالب في نطاق المخيمات، حيث لا يوجد سوى اللاجئين في هذه المدارس. احنا شايفين ان هذا نوع من أنواع الفصل الجغرافي على الرغم من الاندماج في نظام التعليم. وفي بعض الحالات كمان بنشوف فصل زمني للاجئين، حتى على الرغم من الاندماج في نظام التعليم. ففي لبنان، على سبيل المثال، هناك فترتين يحضر اللاجئين فيها فترة بعد الظهر، بينما المواطنون يحضروا فترة الصباح. رغم أنهم بيدرسوا نفس المنهج، عادة مع نفس المعلمين، وباللغة نفسها مع إمكانية اجتياز نفس الامتحان، إلا أنهم لا يكونون مع بعض جسديًا في الفصل. وبالتالي، فالنموذج الثالث للدمج هو اللي فيه بيجتمع اللاجئين والمواطنين جسديًا في المدارس. واحنا بنشوف هذا في كتير من الأحيان في المناطق الحضرية في أماكن مثل أوغندا وإثيوبيا، وكمان في مكان مثل مصر، واللي فيها يدرس السوريين مع المواطنين المصريين ويتعلموا نفس المنهج مع نفس المعلمين.

ومن خلال هذا الاندماج في النظام الوطني، أعتقد أنه وضح أن بعض الحواجز اللي بيواجهها اللاجئين مش حواجز جسدية فقط. نحن نرى بعض اللاجئين رغم انهم بيلتحقوا بنظام تعليمي وطني وبيتبعوا المناهج الوطنية، وبيجلسوا في بعض الحالات، جنبًا إلى جنب مع الطلاب الوطنيين، إلا أنهم لا يجدون نفس الفرص المتاحة خارج المدرسة. أقصد بهذا أن الطلاب اللاجئين هيتخرجوا من المدرسة الابتدائية أو الثانوية، وبعد ذلك لن يكون لهم الحق في العمل أو المشاركة في المجتمع، أو لن يكون عندهم نوع من الاستمرارية في دولة الملجأ تسمح لهم بالاستثمار في عمل تجاري أو أي مشروع لتوفير المعيشة. أعتقد كذلك أنه على الرغم من أن دمج اللاجئين في الأنظمة الوطنية بيمثل رسالة مهمة جدًا للعمل على هدم بعض الحواجز اللي بنشوفها عالميًا، إلا أن فيه كمان أنواع من الحواجز اللي بيتم إنشاؤها من خلال تجربة بتوعد بنوع من الانتماء والإدماج، ولكن بعد ذلك نجد إن اللاجئين بيكافحوا في المجتمع علشان يكونوا قادرين على الحصول على أنواع الفرص اللي بيدوروا عليها.

ويل بريهم: إذن في هذا النموذج الثاني للدمج، بيتم دمج اللاجئين، لكن في نفس الوقت بيتم فصلهم جغرافيا أو زمنيًا، لماذا يوجد فصلهم؟ أقصد، هل هذا لمجرد وجود أسباب عملية مثل الاختلاف الجغرافي، أو هل هناك أمور أخرى خفية بتلعب دور في هذا؟

سارة درايدن بيترسن:أعتقد أن هناك ثلاثة أسباب حقيقية للتفكير في دمج اللاجئين في المدارس الوطنية. وأن هذه النماذج من الفصل بين اللاجئين والوطنيين هي نوع من التلاعب. السبب الأول هو أن دمج اللاجئين في نظام تعليمي وطني يمكن أنه يزيد من فرص الالتحاق بالتعليم الرسمي. وهذا يرتبط بوضوح بالالتزام الدولي بالتعليم العالمي، اللي بيكون من خلال ما يسمى بإعلان “التعليم للجميع”، والأهداف الإنمائية للألفية، وأهداف التنمية المستدامة. وبيتم التفكير في أنظمة التعليم القائمة بالفعل، واللي يمكن للاجئين الالتحاق بيها، لأنها هتكون أقل عرضة لمواجهة الحواجز الشائعة المتمثلة في عدم الوصول للمباني المدرسية، أو وجود عدد محدود من المعلمين، أو ارتفاع تكلفة الطفل الواحد التي تمت معالجتها من خلال هذه النظم. هذا لن يكون حال المدارس الموازية اللي أقيمت للاجئين. أعتقد أن الأساس المنطقي الثاني لهذا الاندماج هو زيادة جودة تعليم اللاجئين، وهذا أيضًا هدف عالمي واضح. وأعتقد أن التركيز على الجودة، سواء بالنسبة للاجئين أو للمواطنين، بيعكس بالفعل فكرة أن الطريق إلى المستقبل -سواء كان اقتصاديًا أو سياسيًا أو اجتماعيًا- بيرتبط بالفعل بأنواع المهارات والقدرات اللي يمكن للأطفال تعلمها وتطبيقها، وبعد ذلك لا يهم هيكون فين هذا المستقبل. بالتالي فالأساس المنطقي هنا هو أن تعليم اللاجئين يمكن أن تكون ليه جودة أعلى في إطار نظام وطني، لأن هناك منهج حالي يمكن اتباعه وفيه معلمين مدربين وفيه إمكانية لإصدار الشهادات اللي من خلالها بيتم الاعتراف بأن التعليم قد اكتمل، ويمكن استخدامها للحصول على مزيد من التعليم أو الحصول على عمل.

ومع ذلك، أعتقد أن التحدي يكمن في أن جودة التعليم في نظام وطني ممكن تكون منخفضة، كما هو الحال في كتير من الدول المضيفة للاجئين. وهكذا، على سبيل المثال، لو اخدنا حالة لبنان، فأقل من 20٪ من اللبنانيين بيلتحقوا بالمدارس العامة في لبنان. الدافع الحقيقي في لبنان هو تضمين اللاجئين في نظام التعليم الوطني داخل المدارس العامة. وفيه أسباب واضحة بالفعل للتفكير بخصوص كيف يمكن لهذا أن يؤدي لزيادة فرص حصول اللاجئين على التعليم؛ وكيف يمكن أن يوفر نوع من الاستمرارية المستقرة أثناء لجوء طويل الأمد؛ وكيف يمكن أن يوفر الحصول على شهادات. كذلك هناك تحديات حقيقية بتتعلق بنوعية التعليم في نظام قائم بالفعل، ناهيك عن التدفق اللي زود عدد السكان في المدارس اللي بتخدم اللاجئين، وأحيانًا بيزيد عن النص. وهذا التحدي مش تحدي حصري بالنسبة لتعليم اللاجئين. وأعتقد أن هذا مجال بيكون من المفيد فيه إعادة صياغة تفكيرنا في تعليم اللاجئين مش بس لسكان معينين، ولكن كمان في إظهار أنواع التحديات اللي بيواجهها السكان الوطنيين المهمشين. والنوع الثالث من الأساس المنطقي لدمج اللاجئين في المدارس الوطنية ممكن يكون من خلال نوع من الانتماء في مجتمع اللجوء طويل الأمد، والشعور بالأمان أو الارتباط، والتحرر من التمييز. اللي بنشوفه في كينيا، على سبيل المثال، هو أن الطلاب بيشعروا بالارتباط بنظام وطني، وبيتم وعدهم بأنهم يتعلموا على يد معلمين مدربين وأنهم يلتحقوا بالامتحانات الوطنية، إلا أن هذا بيكون في توتر مع تجربتهم اللي بيعانوا فيها من العزلة في الفصول الدراسية المزدحمة وفي الأماكن اللي مافيهاش فرص اقتصادية، وبالتالي بيكونوا مش قادرين يشوفوا أن تعليمهم بيؤدي لهذا. وهكذا، من ناحية، بيتم وعدهم بالانتماء والضمان على المدى الطويل من خلال التعليم، ومن ناحية تانية، هذا التوتر في تجربتهم بيرسل ليهم في الواقع رسالة من العزلة والإقصاء.

ويل بريهم: من الحاجات اللي بحبها في شغلك هي قدرتك على الجمع مش بس بين الأنظمة الكبيرة القضايا الهيكلية الخاصة باللاجئين وتعليم اللاجئين، لكنك كمان بتستحضري القضايا للحياة من خلال نظرة متعمقة على الأفراد، وأيه اللي كان لازم يمروا بيه. واحد من الأشخاص اللي التقينا بيهم في عملك اسمه باوما بنيامين. أيه هو نوع مساراته نحو المستقبل؟ وكيف يمكننا تخيل دور التعليم في المستقبل اللي بيحلم بيه؟

سارة درايدن بيترسن:من الطرق اللي بفكر بيها هي أن شغلي اتغير بمرور الوقت، وفي بعض النواحي أصبح بيعكس الطرق اللي بتمنى فيها أن عملية التفكير في تعليم اللاجئين تكون عبارة عن فهم للمسارات طويلة الأجل للأفراد اللي بيعيشوا في أوضاع صراع. بأشعر في كتير من الأحيان أننا بنركز على لحظة واحدة من الزمن، وأننا غير قادرين على رؤية المسار على المدى الطويل. أنت ذكرت باوما بنيامين، اللي أنا كتبت عنه في المقال، وأنا بركز عليه فعلا لأني أعتقد أن تجربته بتلقي الضوء على بعض القضايا الهيكلية الأكبر اللي اتكلمنا عنها. باوما اتولد في جمهورية الكونغو الديمقراطية، واتدرب على التدريس هناك. لكنه اعتقل بسبب عمله في مجال حقوق الإنسان. وهرب لأوغندا، وهناك شعر أن مفيش إمكانية لمواصلة هذا المسار اللي كان بيبنيه كمعلم وكزوج وكأب مرتقب. لما وصل لأوغندا، أرسلوه علشان يعيش في مخيم للاجئين في منطقة معزولة من البلاد. وكانت النظرية هي أن اللاجئين يقدروا يعيشوا في هذه المنطقة من خلال أنهم يزرعوا طعامهم ويخلقوا لنفسهم حياة الكفاف. وهو ماشتغلش في الزراعة قبل ذلك. فأعطوه جاروف وقطعة أرض علشان يزرع طعامه، لكنه مكنش عنده أي خبرة في الزراعة. قرر باوما هو وزوجته وطفلهم الصغير انهم ينتقلوا من مكان إقامة المخيم للمدينة بغرض كسب معيشته والعمل في ما يصفه بأنه شغفه الحقيقي وهو التعليم.

واللي اكتشفه لما وصل لكمبالا هو أن فيه آلاف من الأطفال اللاجئين مش قادرين يروحوا المدرسة. لما تم تدريبه كمدرس في جمهورية الكونغو الديمقراطية، فهم وأدرك حقيقة الفلسفة اللي بتقول: “إذا وصلت إلى وسط غابة وكل ما لديك هو أشجار وأطفال، فمهمتك هي اكتشاف طريقة لتعليم هؤلاء الأطفال”. هذا النوع من التشبيهات منطقي في شرق جمهورية الكونغو الديمقراطية اللي فيها غابات شاسعة. لما وصل لكمبالا، بنفس الطريقة وصف المدينة بأنها الغابة الخاصة به. الآلاف من الأطفال دول ماكنوش قادرين يروحوا المدرسة ، وكان من مسؤوليته اكتشاف كيف يحصلوا على تعليم. أفتكر أني سألته في يوم من الأيام: “أيه هو هدفك لهذه المدرسة؟” فكتب على قطعة ورق، “ضمان التعليم الأساسي لأطفالنا لإعدادهم لحياتهم المستقبلية”. وأنا احتفظت بهذه الورقة، وأعتقد أن هذا الهدف كان بكيفية ما وسيلة ليه علشان يتذكر مساره ويتطلع إلى أطفاله ومسارات طلابه. والطريقة اللي فكر بها في إعدادهم لحياتهم المستقبلية كانت بالتفكير في الدور اللي يمكن أنه يلعبه كمعلم ليهم.

وعمل باوما هذه المدرسة في أماكن كتيرة مختلفة. كانت في الأصل في منزل أحد الأشخاص، فماكنتش بتبدأ غير لما يكون الكل خارج المنزل. وبعدها كانت المدرسة في ساحة كنيسة وبعدين داخل مدرسة أوغندية وطنية. في كل يوم لما الأطفال كانوا بييجوا للمدرسة، بغض النظر عن مكان وجودها، كان باوما ينظر ليهم ويفكر في نوع المستقبل اللي قد يرثوه لو مساعدهمش على التفكير في كيفية بناء وطن، وكيفية تمهيد الطرق اللي من خلالها يوقفوا الاقصاء اللي عانوا منه كلاجئين في أوغندا. كل يوم كان الطلاب بييجوا للمدرسة ويقولوا لي كباحث، أنه تم تسميتهم بأسماء سيئة مختلفة عن أسمائهم الحقيقية وأن آبائهم ما قدروش يلاقوا وظائف وأنهم حاولوا يروحوا مدارس وطنية في أوغندا، لكنهم ماقدروش يلتحقوا بيها. وقالوا قصص بطرق كتيرة عن كيف انهم مش قادرين حتى يتخيلوا كيفية بناء مستقبلهم.من بعض الطرق اللي اتصرف بيها باوما كمدرس علشان يساعدهم على تخيل مستقبلهم هو أنه أولًا كان حريص على أنه ينادي كل طالب باسمه. قد يبدو هذا وكأنه شيء صغير بسيط، ولكن الأطفال اللي تم تسميتهم في الشارع بأسماء سيئة غير أسمائهم، أو الأطفال اللي مش قادرين تكون عندهم هوية يكونوا معروفين بيها، من حيث هويتهم ثقافيًا واجتماعيًا ولغويًا، في مكان جديد. كونهم يتم النداء عليهم بأسمائهم فهذا أمر ليه معنى كبير بالنسبة لهم. هو كمان علمهم عن السلام وعن الحرب. واللي بنشوفه غالبًا في تعليم اللاجئين هو تجنب بعض القضايا المثيرة للجدل بالفعل لأنه مفيش حل سهل، وقد تكون هناك جوانب متضاربة كتير لصراع معين لأطفال ولأسر داخل المدرسة الواحدة. لكن اللي شافه باوما هو أن هؤلاء الأطفال اللي كانوا بييجوا لمدرسته كل يوم، كانوا بيفكروا في الحرب، لأنهم جربوها. وكانوا بيفكروا في أيه هي هويتهم، وأيه هي نقاط القوة اللي حواليهم. تجنب هذه المواضيع، في الواقع، كان بيعلمهم أنهم مايملكوش أي قوة أو حيلة في داخلهم للتصرف. علشان كدا شعر باوما أن مسؤوليته هي مساعدة الأطفال على التفكير في هذه القضايا من خلال العمل عليها، حتى لو اتسبب هذا في مواقف مثيرة للخلاف داخل الفصل الدراسي.

هو كمان احتوى الأوغنديين الفقراء في المدرسة اللي بدأها مخصوص للاجئين، وهؤلاء كانوا من الناس اللي ماقدروش في أنهم يلتحقوا بالمدرسة الابتدائية. وبهذه الطريقة، تم إنشاء مجتمع يمكن فيه للاجئين والمواطنين اللي تم استبعادهم بطرق مختلفة أنهم يتحدوا مع بعض لبناء مجتمع تعليمي. وبطرق كتيرة، كان مجتمع التعلم ومجتمع الانتماء هو ما سعى باوما لخلقه وتمكّن من إنشاؤه، وأظهر بالفعل للأطفال والأسر أنهم ماكنش لازم يعيشوا حياة عدم اليقين، ولكنهم كانوا يقدروا في الواقع أنهم يبنوا وطن ومستقبل. وأنا أعتقد أن الأمر المهم في العمل اللي عمله هو أنه ماكنش أعمى عن أنواع الحواجز اللي هيظل الأطفال وأسر اللاجئين يواجهوها. ماكنش أعمى عن حقيقة أن معظمهم ان تتاح ليهم فرصة للعمل حتى لو اتخرجوا من المدرسة.وبالتالي هو حاول أنه يفكر معهم كيف يقدروا يخلقوا فرص جديدة، ويتخيلوا الدور اللي ممكن يلعبوه كمحاولة لمعالجة بعض أشكال الاقصاء اللي بيعانوا منه بدل ما يعزلوا نفسهم. وأحنا بنفكر في التعليم، فكرة المستقبل غير المعلوم بتشكل الطريقة اللي من خلالها بنفكر في جودة الخيارات المتاحة وفهمها. أعتقد أن الواقع هو أن صانعي السياسة والمدرسين والأطفال محتاجين كل يوم انهم ياخدوا قرارات بخصوص المنهج اللي هيتبعه اللاجئين، واللغة اللي هيتم تعليمهم بيها، ونوع الشهادات اللي هيحصلوا عليها، وأنواع المدارس اللي في النهاية يمكن أنها تهيئهم لعدم اليقين في العمل وفي الحياة في كل من الحاضر والمستقبل.

ويل بريهيم: أوك سارة درايدن بيترسن، أنا بشكر حضرتك جدًا لوجودك معنا في برنامج فريش إيد. كان موضوع شيق، وأنا عايز أشكرك على كل اللي بتعمليه.

سارة درايدن بيترسن:شكرًا جزيلًا يا ويل، سعدت بالحوار معاك

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Will Brehm 2:07
Sarah Dryden Peterson, bienvenue à FreshEd.

Sarah Dryden Peterson 2:09
Merci beaucoup Will. Merci de me recevoir.

Will Brehm 2:11
Pouvez-vous nous décrire la situation actuelle des réfugiés dans le monde ?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  2:17
Evidemment. Nous écoutons très souvent ce mot ces temps-ci – “réfugié”. Et je voulais, juste avant de débuter, dire un petit mot à propos de ce mot. Certaines des personnes avec lesquelles je travaille acceptent vraiment le terme de réfugié et d’autres le rejettent. Et je trouve que comme pour toutes les étiquettes, cela dépend vraiment de la façon dont nous l’utilisons, de la façon dont ce terme est coopté ou, dans de nombreux cas, utilisé pour priver les gens de leur pouvoir et les exclure. Lorsque je parle de réfugié, c’est dans le souci de retourner à l’idée fondamentale de la recherche d’un refuge, d’un sanctuaire et d’un sentiment d’appartenance. Nous savons que le nombre de réfugiés dans le monde est actuellement au plus haut niveau de l’histoire. En 2016, il y avait au total 22 millions et demi de personnes vivant comme réfugiés dans le monde. Et en 2016, 3,4 millions de ces personnes ont été nouvellement déplacées pour devenir des réfugiés. Nous constatons donc également un accroissement du nombre de personnes devenant des réfugiés.

Parallèlement, de nombreuses personnes ont connu l’exil en tant que réfugiés pendant de nombreuses années, voire de nombreuses décennies. Par exemple, des conflits en Afghanistan, ou en République démocratique du Congo, et en Somalie. Je pense également qu’une autre dimension vraiment importante de la réflexion sur la situation actuelle des réfugiés dans le monde est que 84 % des réfugiés vivent en exil dans des pays voisins de leur pays d’origine touché par un conflit. Ainsi, par exemple, en 2016, plus de 1,4 million de réfugiés, principalement afghans, vivaient au Pakistan, et près d’un million en Iran. Nous savons que près de 3 millions de réfugiés, principalement syriens, vivaient en Turquie, et un million au Liban, et près d’un million de réfugiés, principalement sud-soudanais, vivaient en Ouganda et en Éthiopie. Ainsi, alors que nos médias en Amérique du Nord et en Europe peuvent souvent nous faire croire que la crise des réfugiés se produit là où nous sommes en Amérique du Nord et en Europe, la réalité est que la plupart des réfugiés vivent très près de leur pays d’origine, et souvent dans des pays d’accueil qui sont déjà surchargés en termes d’éducation des citoyens de ces pays.

Will Brehm  4:51
D’accord, donc il y a plus de personnes à tout moment à la recherche d’un refuge. La plupart des gens, la grande majorité de ces gens sont dans des pays voisins d’où ils viennent, et vous dites que des gens sont déplacés depuis des décennies ?

Sarah Dryden Peterson 5:09
C’est exact. En effet, la durée moyenne de l’exil est de 17 ans. Et quand on y pense, c’est vraiment toute la durée de l’éducation d’un enfant. Donc, alors que la plupart des réfugiés et des familles pensent qu’ils retourneront rapidement dans leur pays d’origine et espèrent que c’est le cas, la réalité est que de nombreuses personnes seront déplacées pendant de nombreuses années. Et l’incertitude qui en découle affecte réellement la façon dont nous envisageons la situation des réfugiés, y compris la manière dont ils sont éduqués.

Will Brehm 5:49
Exact. Et donc il doit y avoir des réfugiés qui, en cherchant refuge dans les pays voisins, ont aussi des familles et doivent s’installer dans une vie particulière. Je veux dire que 17 ans, c’est beaucoup de temps.

Sarah Dryden Peterson 6:09
C’est juste. La plupart des réfugiés, des étudiants et des familles avec lesquels nous avons travaillé dans le camp de réfugiés de Dadaab au Kenya, par exemple, sont nés à Dadaab. Et donc le genre de discours sur le retour des réfugiés, en réalité pour beaucoup de jeunes, un retour dans le pays d’origine de leurs parents est un retour dans un endroit qu’ils n’ont jamais connu.

Will Brehm 6:40
Et la maison est-elle un camp de réfugiés, ou vivent-ils à l’intérieur, vous savez, des villes et d’autres endroits dans ces pays voisins ?

Sarah Dryden Peterson 6:52
Donc, les deux. Il continue d’y avoir des camps de réfugiés, mais plus de la moitié des réfugiés habitent dans des zones urbaines. Et à bien des égards, cela dépend du pays d’exil. Certains pays ont adopté des politiques selon lesquelles les réfugiés doivent vivre dans des camps, mais dans de nombreux endroits, les réfugiés vivent dans des zones urbaines, au milieu des populations nationales, et cherchent à accéder aux moyens de subsistance qu’ils avaient dans leur pays d’origine. Et je pense que cela reflète également l’urbanisation mondiale, de sorte que de nombreux réfugiés viennent des villes et vont également dans les villes pour tenter de construire leur vie. Et je pense que cela revient au point dont nous parlions avant, à savoir que si l’exil doit être prolongé, il s’agit vraiment de construire une vie là où l’on vit, et cela inclut la possibilité de pratiquer le genre d’occupations que les gens avaient avant de fuir en exil, et la possibilité de créer les conditions dans lesquelles ils peuvent éduquer leurs enfants et construire un avenir aussi incertain soit-il.

Will Brehm 8:16
L’ONU dispose donc d’un organisme qui travaille ou essaie d’aider les réfugiés. Quel genre de solutions proposent-ils pour ce problème de grande ampleur, comme vous l’avez expliqué ?

Sarah Dryden Peterson 8:30
La stratégie d’éducation du HCR qui a débuté en 2012, et dont j’ai participé à la rédaction, mettait l’accent sur l’intégration des “réfugiés” dans les systèmes éducatifs nationaux, et c’était un véritable changement par rapport au fait que les réfugiés étaient éduqués principalement dans des systèmes parallèles. Cette intégration prévoyait réellement un chemin vers l’avenir qui répondait à l’exil très long que connaissent la plupart des réfugiés. La politique a mis en place des structures importantes comme la reconnaissance des enfants et des jeunes réfugiés dans l’espace éducatif national. Avant le lancement de la stratégie, le HCR n’avait pas de relations formelles avec les autorités nationales en matière d’éducation dans les pays d’accueil des réfugiés. En 2015, des relations existaient mais dans 20 des 25 plus grands pays d’accueil de réfugiés. Ce type de formalité et de reconnaissance du fait que les réfugiés sont ici et doivent être considérés en termes de ce qui se passe avec l’éducation dans l’État-nation. Maintenant que cette politique est en place, nous tournons notre attention vers la manière dont les enfants et les jeunes réfugiés vivent cette politique.

L’une des questions les plus fondamentales, à mon avis, dans le domaine de l’éducation des réfugiés, qui a trait à la façon dont nous considérons les organismes mondiaux travaillant sur ces questions, est d’essayer d’imaginer à quels types de futurs réfugiés se préparent, compte tenu de ce genre d’incertitude dont nous avons parlé. Ainsi, le Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés, qui est le HCR, l’organisme mondial que vous avez mentionné, a le mandat de venir en aide aux réfugiés et d’assurer leur protection en exil, et le HCR décrit trois solutions possibles, ce qu’on appelle des “solutions durables” pour les réfugiés ; cette idée d’une situation qui pourrait marquer la fin du type de persécution qui a conduit à la fuite en premier ressort. Une solution durable est la réinsertion dans un pays lointain. Ainsi, dans l’article, nous observons que Bauma Benjamin a finalement été relogé au Canada depuis l’Ouganda, son pays d’origine étant la République démocratique du Congo. Cette option de réinsertion n’est en réalité accessible qu’à moins de 1 % des réfugiés dans le monde, mais c’est une solution durable envisageable de cette façon. Une deuxième solution durable étant le retour dans le pays d’origine. Et une troisième solution durable possible étant l’intégration à long terme dans le pays d’accueil. Et l’une des choses sur lesquelles je me suis penchée est la manière dont ces voies d’avenir possibles ou ces solutions durables jouent réellement en termes d’éducation des réfugiés. Ces trois voies sont, à bien des égards, géographiquement délimitées, de sorte qu’elles se focalisent sur l’État nation dans lequel se situera l’avenir.

Ce que nous découvrons, c’est que cette approche qui vise réellement l’État-nation ne reflète pas toujours les manières transnationales dont les réfugiés recherchent des possibilités d’éducation, des opportunités économiques et des opportunités sociales. Ainsi, dans notre travail, nous avons réellement conceptualisé quatre voies vers l’avenir, les trois solutions durables que le HCR décrit et une voie transnationale vers l’avenir. Et lorsque nous nous interrogeons sur ce que ces voies d’avenir représentent réellement pour un enfant réfugié ou un jeune qui tente de créer sa vie, nous pensons à la réinsertion. Il s’agit d’un processus par lequel un réfugié quitterait un pays d’exil, ayant reçu l’asile dans ce pays, pour se rendre ensuite dans un pays plus lointain, qui est, dans le cas de la réinsertion, généralement un pays dont le revenu national brut par habitant est élevé. Il s’agit donc généralement de pays d’Amérique du Nord ou d’Europe. Et ce processus de réinsertion est accompagné d’une sorte de certitude que les autres voies vers l’avenir ne le sont pas vraiment. Et en particulier, il s’accompagne d’une voie vers la citoyenneté qui n’est pas disponible pour la plupart des réfugiés dans le monde. Ainsi, à bien des égards, les réfugiés percevront souvent la réinsertion comme le type d’avenir ultime, notamment en termes de possibilités d’éducation pour leurs enfants. Mais comme je l’ai mentionné, moins de 1% des réfugiés ont accès à la réinsertion. Une autre voie possible vers l’avenir, liée au type de solutions que vous avez mentionnées, consiste donc à préparer les jeunes au retour dans leur pays d’origine. Et depuis toujours, l’objectif de l’éducation des réfugiés a été harmonisé avec cette voie vers l’avenir. Il faut donc penser à l’éducation des réfugiés, afin qu’ils soient prêts à retourner dans leur pays d’origine après une période d’exil. Mais je considère que ce qui est critique dans la situation dans laquelle nous nous trouvons actuellement, c’est que le retour dans un pays d’origine est de plus en plus improbable, surtout à court terme. Donc, si nous savons que la durée de l’exil est longue, cela suppose que nous devons penser différemment à l’éducation en termes de poursuite de cette voie vers un éventuel retour, et non un retour immédiat.

Parfois, une éducation conçue comme un retour dans le pays d’origine peut en fait défavoriser les jeunes et les enfants en les empêchant d’avoir des opportunités dans le pays d’exil, où ils peuvent se trouver pendant une longue période. Ainsi, le manque de capacité à communiquer dans la langue du pays d’exil, ou le manque de compréhension sur la façon dont les systèmes et les structures fonctionnent dans ce pays, afin de poursuivre divers types d’opportunités. Par ailleurs, nous constatons souvent que les enfants et les familles de réfugiés cherchent à établir un véritable lien avec leur pays d’origine, même s’ils sont déplacés pendant une longue période, afin d’assurer une certaine continuité éducative avec leurs expériences antérieures, et aussi pour rester en contact grâce à des liens culturels et communautaires.

Une troisième voie envisageable pour l’avenir est ce type de situation transnationale que j’ai mentionné. Et je pense que, contrairement aux solutions durables qui reposent sur la cessation des migrations, cette voie est réellement centrée sur les opportunités qui pourraient être créées par une migration continue, qui est souvent motivée par la recherche par les réfugiés d’opportunités stables et à long terme. Et nous observons de plus en plus dans les conversations avec les enfants et les jeunes réfugiés qu’ils imaginent et planifient une vie transnationale, même s’ils ne savent pas exactement à quoi cela ressemblerait. Cette idée d’un parcours transnational peut, d’une certaine manière, permettre à un groupe intermédiaire d’individus de maintenir leur appartenance à leur communauté d’origine et à leur pays d’origine, même lorsqu’ils sont déplacés dans un pays d’exil. Cela souligne la nécessité de préserver la langue et la culture du pays d’origine par le biais de l’éducation, ce qui pourrait permettre aux individus de rentrer chez eux, tout en laissant ouvertes d’autres possibilités pour une vie transnationale. Ce qui nous semble particulièrement difficile, c’est que si, dans leur vision, les enfants et les jeunes réfugiés peuvent rechercher ce type de parcours transnational, dans de nombreuses situations, il existe des restrictions claires qui empêchent les réfugiés de se déplacer d’un endroit à un autre, ou même à l’intérieur d’un pays d’exil, de travailler, de participer à la vie civile et politique. On peut donc imaginer dans l’abstrait une situation dans laquelle des opportunités pourraient être recherchées dans plusieurs endroits, mais en réalité, on se heurte à des obstacles qui empêchent cette participation à tous les niveaux.

Will Brehm 17:19
Et les barres littérales, non ? Je veux dire que dans certains de ces camps de réfugiés, par exemple, il y a des clôtures et des barreaux. Je pense, par exemple, à l’île de Manus, où l’Australie place tous les réfugiés dans leur pays, et il y a des barrières autour de ces camps où les réfugiés doivent vivre. Et donc, vous savez, j’imagine qu’imaginer un avenir transnational serait plutôt difficile.

Sarah Dryden Peterson 17:52
C’est bien cela. Dans plusieurs parties du monde, nous rencontrons des réfugiés dont l’accès à un espace national ou transnational est physiquement interdit. Et en réalité, ils se voient envoyer le message clair que leur avenir n’est nulle part. En ce qui concerne l’éducation des réfugiés, je pense qu’il y a aussi une façon de voir ces barrières être érigées de façon un peu plus invisible, mais peut-être tout aussi importante. Ainsi, la stratégie d’intégration des réfugiés dans les systèmes éducatifs nationaux est une priorité claire du Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés depuis la stratégie d’éducation 2012 – 2016. Et ce que nous constatons globalement, c’est que la stratégie est mise en œuvre dans différents contextes nationaux. Ainsi, en 2011, il existait très peu de pays dans lesquels les réfugiés pouvaient aller dans une école nationale, nous voyons maintenant le HCR avoir des relations claires avec les ministères de l’éducation dans la plupart des États-nations qui accueillent des réfugiés, et les réfugiés ont un certain type d’intégration dans un système national. J’aimerais donc donner quelques exemples avant d’aborder ce que je pense être certains des obstacles auxquels les réfugiés sont confrontés, même s’il ne s’agit pas d’obstacles littéraux.

Ainsi, dans les recherches que nous avons menées au cours des dernières années, nous avons réellement constaté trois types d’intégration des réfugiés dans les écoles nationales. Le premier est, en fait, l’absence d’intégration ; dans les situations où les réfugiés ne sont pas autorisés à fréquenter les écoles que les nationaux fréquentent, et où nous voyons les réfugiés avoir une sorte d’éducation parallèle. C’est donc le cas au Bangladesh, par exemple, et en Malaisie, où il existe des écoles qui sont créées pour les réfugiés, mais uniquement pour les réfugiés. Et dans la plupart des cas, il s’agit d’imaginer un chemin vers l’avenir qui est soit un retour dans le pays d’origine, soit un chemin vers une vie en dehors de ce pays d’exil. Dans les situations où nous voyons des réfugiés et des nationaux à la fois dans les écoles nationales, c’est vraiment partagé aussi. Ainsi, dans certains pays, nous voyons des réfugiés intégrés à un système national. Ils suivent donc le même programme scolaire national dans la langue d’enseignement nationale et ont accès aux mêmes examens que les élèves nationaux à la fin de l’école primaire et secondaire, mais ils sont séparés des ressortissants nationaux pour ce qui est de savoir s’ils se voient dans la même classe. Et nous voyons que cette séparation est géographique dans les cas où il y a des camps de réfugiés. Ainsi, au Kenya, par exemple, les réfugiés suivent le programme scolaire kenyan en anglais et en swahili, et passent les examens de fin d’études primaires et secondaires, mais ils sont isolés pour la plupart dans les camps, où il n’y a que des réfugiés dans les écoles. Nous observons donc cette séparation géographique malgré l’intégration au système. Dans certains cas, nous constatons également une ségrégation temporelle des réfugiés, une séparation des réfugiés, même en dépit de l’intégration au système. Ainsi, au Liban, par exemple, il y a deux équipes, l’une pour les réfugiés l’après-midi, l’autre pour les nationaux le matin. Ils suivent donc le même programme, généralement avec les mêmes enseignants, dans la même langue et avec le même accès à un processus d’examen, mais ils ne sont pas physiquement regroupés en classe. Le troisième modèle d’intégration est celui où les réfugiés et les nationaux sont physiquement regroupés dans les écoles. Nous le constatons souvent dans les zones urbaines en Ouganda et en Éthiopie, ainsi qu’en Égypte, où les Syriens étudient avec les Égyptiens et suivent le même programme avec les mêmes enseignants.

Et grâce à cette intégration au système national, je pense qu’elle a rendu visibles certains des obstacles auxquels les réfugiés sont confrontés et qui ne sont pas des obstacles physiques. Nous constatons donc que les réfugiés accèdent à un système d’éducation national, qu’ils suivent le programme national, qu’ils sont parfois assis aux côtés d’élèves nationaux, mais qu’ils n’ont pas les mêmes possibilités en dehors de la structure scolaire. Je veux donc souligner que les élèves réfugiés obtiendront leur diplôme de l’école primaire ou secondaire et n’auront pas le droit de travailler, de participer à la vie de la communauté ou d’avoir une sorte de permanence dans le pays d’exil qui leur permettrait d’investir dans la création d’une entreprise ou d’un moyen de subsistance. Je pense donc que, si l’inclusion des réfugiés dans les systèmes nationaux est un message extrêmement important qui tente de faire tomber certaines de ces barrières que nous voyons dans le monde, il y a aussi les types de barrières qui sont érigées à travers une expérience qui promet une sorte d’appartenance et d’inclusion, mais ensuite une société dans laquelle les réfugiés luttent pour pouvoir poursuivre le genre d’opportunités qu’ils recherchent.

Will Brehm  24:03
Alors dans ce deuxième modèle d’intégration, où tout est intégré, mais où tout est séparé géographiquement ou temporairement, pourquoi ? Pourquoi y a-t-il une séparation ? Je veux dire, est-ce simplement pour des raisons pratiques comme l’éloignement géographique, ou y a-t-il d’autres questions sous-jacentes en jeu également ?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  24:28
Je considère qu’il existe trois véritables raisons de penser à l’intégration des réfugiés dans les écoles nationales. Et ensuite que ces modèles de séparation jouent un peu là-dedans. La première est donc que l’intégration des réfugiés dans un système éducatif national peut améliorer l’accès à la scolarité formelle. Et cela est clairement lié à l’engagement mondial en faveur de l’éducation universelle, avec la déclaration de l’Éducation pour tous, les objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement et les objectifs de développement durable. Et il convient de penser aux systèmes éducatifs déjà existants, auxquels les réfugiés peuvent accéder, car ils seraient moins susceptibles de faire face aux obstacles communs que sont le manque d’accès aux bâtiments scolaires, le nombre limité d’enseignants ou le coût élevé par enfant, auxquels les systèmes ont remédié. Ce ne serait pas le cas des écoles parallèles mises en place pour les réfugiés. Je pense que la deuxième raison de cette intégration est d’améliorer la qualité de l’éducation des réfugiés, ce qui est également un objectif global clair. Et la priorité accordée à la qualité, tant pour les réfugiés que pour les nationaux, reflète, je pense, cette notion selon laquelle la voie vers l’avenir – qu’il soit économique, politique ou social – est réellement liée aux types de compétences et de capacités que les enfants peuvent apprendre et appliquer, quel que soit l’endroit où se trouve cet avenir. La justification serait donc que l’éducation des réfugiés pourrait être de meilleure qualité au sein d’un système national, parce qu’il existe un programme existant qui peut être suivi, qu’il y a des enseignants formés et qu’il y a une possibilité de certification. D’une manière ou d’une autre, on reconnaîtrait que l’éducation a été achevée et que cela peut être utilisé comme un signal pour poursuivre des études ou trouver un emploi.

Cependant, je pense que le défi est que la qualité de l’éducation au sein d’un système national peut être médiocre, comme c’est le cas dans de nombreux pays d’accueil de réfugiés. Ainsi, par exemple, si nous prenons le cas du Liban, moins de 20 % des ressortissants libanais accèdent aux écoles publiques au Liban. Le véritable effort au Liban consiste à inclure les réfugiés dans le système éducatif national, dans les écoles publiques. Et il existe des raisons très claires de réfléchir à la manière dont cela pourrait accroître l’accès à l’éducation pour les réfugiés ; pourrait fournir une sorte de continuité stable pendant un exil prolongé ; pourrait permettre l’accès à la certification. Et puis il y a de réels défis liés à la qualité de l’éducation dans un système déjà existant, sans parler de l’afflux qui a augmenté la population dans les écoles servant les réfugiés, parfois de plus de la moitié. Et ce n’est pas un défi qui est propre à l’éducation des réfugiés. Et je pense que c’est là qu’il est utile de recadrer notre pensée sur l’éducation des réfugiés, non seulement en ce qui concerne une population particulière, mais aussi pour rendre visible le type de défis que les populations nationales marginalisées rencontrent également. Et le troisième type de justification de l’intégration des réfugiés dans les écoles nationales est qu’elle pourrait permettre une sorte d’appartenance à la société d’un exil de longue durée, un sentiment de sécurité ou de connexion, et la liberté de ne pas subir de discrimination. Mais ces modèles d’intégration qui reposent en réalité sur une séparation – ce que nous constatons au Kenya, par exemple, c’est que les élèves ressentent ce lien avec un système national, et le genre de promesse d’enseignants formés et de candidats aux examens nationaux, qui est alors en tension avec leur expérience d’être isolés dans des salles de classe surpeuplées, dans des endroits où il n’y a pas d’opportunités économiques et donc ils ne peuvent pas voir leur éducation mener à cela. Et donc, d’une part, cette promesse d’appartenance et de certitude à long terme grâce à l’éducation. Et d’autre part, cette tension d’une expérience qui envoie en fait un message d’isolement et d’exclusion.

Will Brehm  29:03
L’une des choses que je trouve intéressantes dans votre travail, c’est que vous êtes capable de réunir ces questions plus vastes, structurelles, de réfugiés et d’éducation des réfugiés, mais vous donnez également vie à ces questions en examinant en profondeur les individus et ce qu’ils ont dû traverser. L’une des personnes que nous rencontrons dans votre travail s’appelle Bauma Benjamin, et quel était son cheminement vers l’avenir, n’est-ce pas ? Comment imaginait-il que l’éducation puisse fonctionner pour l’avenir qu’il imaginait ?

Sarah Dryden Peterson  29:38
Je considère que mon travail a évolué au fil du temps et, d’une certaine manière, reflète la façon dont j’espère que la réflexion sur l’éducation des réfugiés consiste à comprendre les trajectoires à long terme des personnes qui évoluent dans des situations de conflit. J’ai souvent l’impression que nous nous concentrons sur un moment précis et que nous ne sommes pas capables de voir cette trajectoire à long terme. Vous avez donc mentionné ici Bauma Benjamin, sur lequel j’écris dans cet article, et je me concentre vraiment sur lui parce que je pense que son expérience a mis en lumière certains des problèmes structurels plus importants dont nous venons de parler. Bauma est né en République démocratique du Congo. Il a fait sa formation d’enseignant en RDC. Mais il a été arrêté pour son travail en faveur des droits de l’homme. Il s’est alors enfui en Ouganda, où il a senti qu’il n’y avait aucune possibilité de poursuivre le genre de trajectoire qu’il avait construite en tant qu’enseignant, en tant que mari, en tant que futur père. Lorsqu’il est arrivé en Ouganda, il a été envoyé dans un camp de réfugiés situé dans une région isolée du pays où la théorie de la subsistance des réfugiés dans cette région était qu’ils pouvaient cultiver leur propre nourriture et créer une vie de subsistance. Il n’avait jamais pratiqué l’agriculture auparavant. On lui a donc offert une houe et un morceau de terre pour qu’il puisse cultiver sa propre nourriture, mais il n’avait aucune expérience en la matière. Il a donc décidé, avec sa femme et leur jeune enfant, de quitter le campement pour la ville afin de poursuivre sa vie et ce qu’il décrit comme sa véritable passion, l’enseignement.

Et ce qu’il a découvert en arrivant à Kampala, c’est qu’il y avait des milliers d’enfants réfugiés qui n’avaient pas la possibilité d’aller à l’école. Et lorsqu’il a été formé comme enseignant en République démocratique du Congo, il a compris et est vraiment venu vivre cette philosophie : si vous arrivez au milieu d’une forêt et que tout ce que vous avez, ce sont des arbres et des enfants, alors c’est votre travail de trouver un moyen d’enseigner à ces enfants. Et ce genre de métaphore avait un sens dans l’est de la République démocratique du Congo où il y avait de vastes forêts. Lorsqu’il est arrivé à Kampala, il a décrit la ville comme sa forêt de cette façon. Mais ces milliers d’enfants qui ne pouvaient pas aller à l’école, et il était de sa responsabilité de trouver comment ils pourraient recevoir une éducation. Je me souviens qu’un jour, je lui ai demandé : “Quel est votre objectif pour cette école ?” Et il a écrit sur un bout de papier : “Assurer à nos enfants une éducation de base pour les préparer à leur vie future”. Et j’ai gardé ce morceau de papier sur lequel il avait écrit, et je pense que d’une certaine manière, cet objectif était une façon pour lui de regarder à la fois son propre cheminement et d’envisager le cheminement de ses propres enfants et de ses élèves. Et la façon dont il a pensé à les préparer à leur vie future était en fait de penser au rôle qu’il pourrait jouer en tant que leur professeur.

Et Bauma tenait cette école dans de nombreux endroits différents. A l’origine, elle se trouvait dans la maison de quelqu’un, donc l’école ne pouvait pas commencer avant que tout le monde soit debout et hors de la maison. Mais chaque jour, lorsque les enfants venaient dans cette école, peu importe où elle se trouvait, Bauma les regardait et songeait au genre d’avenir dont ils pourraient hériter s’il ne les aidait pas à réfléchir à la manière de créer un foyer et de cultiver réellement les moyens de mettre fin à l’exclusion dont ils faisaient l’objet en tant que réfugiés en Ouganda. Tous les jours, les élèves venaient à l’école et lui disaient et me disaient, en tant que chercheur dans cette situation, qu’on les traitait de tous les noms, que leurs parents ne pouvaient pas trouver de travail, qu’ils avaient essayé d’aller dans les écoles nationales ougandaises, mais que nous ne pouvions pas y accéder, et à bien des égards, ils nous racontaient des histoires sur la façon dont ils ne pouvaient même pas imaginer comment créer leur avenir. Pour les aider à imaginer leur avenir, le professeur Bauma a commencé par appeler chaque élève par son nom. Et cela peut sembler un petit élément très simple, mais les enfants qui étaient appelés par des noms qui n’étaient pas les leurs – et pas des noms sympathiques – dans la rue, ou qui n’étaient pas capables d’être reconnus pour ce qu’ils étaient, en termes d’identité, culturellement, socialement, linguistiquement, dans un nouvel endroit. Le fait d’être appelé par son nom avait un sens. Il leur enseignait aussi bien la paix, mais aussi la guerre. Et ce que nous voyons souvent dans l’éducation des réfugiés, c’est un évitement de certaines des questions vraiment litigieuses parce qu’il n’y a pas de solution facile, et qu’il peut y avoir de nombreuses parties conflictuelles à un conflit particulier d’enfants et de familles au sein d’une même école. Mais ce que Bauma a vu, c’est que ces enfants qui venaient à son école tous les jours, pensaient à la guerre, parce qu’ils en avaient fait l’expérience. Et ils pensaient à leur identité et aux structures de pouvoir qui les entouraient. Et le fait d’éviter ces sujets leur apprenait en fait qu’ils n’avaient pas le pouvoir d’agir en leur sein. C’est pourquoi Bauma a estimé qu’il était de sa responsabilité d’aider les enfants à réfléchir à ces questions, même si elles étaient à l’origine de situations litigieuses dans la classe, pour les résoudre.

Il a également intégré des Ougandais pauvres, qui à l’époque n’avaient pas accès à l’école primaire, dans l’école qu’il avait créée pour les réfugiés. Et de cette façon, il a créé une communauté où les réfugiés et les nationaux qui étaient tous deux exclus de différentes manières pouvaient se réunir pour créer une communauté d’apprentissage. Et à bien des égards, c’est cette communauté d’apprentissage et cette communauté d’appartenance que Bauma a cherché à créer et qu’il a pu créer, et montrer réellement aux enfants et aux familles qu’ils n’avaient pas à vivre cette vie d’incertitude, mais qu’ils pouvaient en fait construire un foyer et un avenir à ce moment précis. Et je trouve que ce qui était important dans le travail qu’il a fait, c’est qu’il n’a pas ignoré le type de barrières structurelles auxquelles les enfants et les familles de réfugiés allaient continuer à être confrontés. Il n’a pas ignoré le fait que la plupart d’entre eux n’auraient pas la possibilité de travailler même s’ils obtenaient leur diplôme. Ainsi, il a essayé de réfléchir avec eux à la manière dont ils pourraient créer de nouvelles opportunités et d’imaginer le rôle qu’ils pourraient jouer pour tenter de remédier à certaines exclusions plutôt que de s’en isoler. Et lorsque nous pensons à l’éducation, cette idée d’un avenir inconnaissable façonne la manière dont nous pouvons réfléchir et comprendre la qualité des options disponibles. Je pense que la réalité est que chaque jour, les décideurs politiques, les enseignants et les enfants doivent prendre des décisions sur le programme d’études que les réfugiés suivront, la langue dans laquelle ils seront enseignés, le type de certification qu’ils recevront et les types d’écoles qui, en fin de compte, peuvent les préparer à l’incertitude. Pour le travail, pour la vie dans le présent et dans l’avenir, aussi inconnaissable que cet avenir puisse être.

Will Brehm  38:14
Eh bien, Sarah Dryden Peterson, merci beaucoup d’avoir rejoint FreshEd ; c’est un sujet tellement fascinant, et je tiens à vous remercier pour tout le travail que vous y avez consacré.

Sarah Dryden Peterson  38:23
Merci beaucoup Will, ce fut un plaisir de parler avec vous.

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Today we look at entrepreneurship education in Tanzania. You might be asking yourself, “Hey, didn’t FreshEd recently discuss entrepreneurship education in Rwanda?” You’re right. We did.

Obviously, the idea of entrepreneurship education is a global phenomenon, found in many different countries. As such, we need to understand what it is in each local context, who is promoting, how it is spreading, and what it means for education and society.

My guest today is Joan DeJaeghere. She has a new book out called Educating Entrepreneurial Citizens: Neoliberalism and youth livelihoods in Tanzania. For Joan, entrepreneurship education cannot be separated from neoliberalism, the contemporary form of capitalism that emerged in the 1970s.

Her book explores the multiple and contradictory purposes and effects of entrepreneurship education aimed at addressing youth unemployment and alleviating poverty in Tanzania.

Joan DeJaeghere is a Professor of Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota.

Citation: DeJaeghere, Joan, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 84, podcast audio, July 31, 2017. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/joandejaeghere/

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Rwanda is perhaps most well-known for the genocide it experienced in the 1990s. In its post-conflict development, the country has had to balance colonial legacies, state centralizing tendencies, and the zeitgeist of neoliberalism. This has made for a careful balancing — one that has left the government regulating the society and economy while simultaneously reducing its responsibility to citizens.

In education, this balancing act manifests in the government’s three aims: credentials, controls, and creativity. The education system is based on credentials awarded through examinations, a colonial hangover, and controls students as part of the state’s centralization efforts; yet, somehow, the system promotes creativity so students can pursue a learner-centered education tailored to their own needs, preparing them for the 21st century labor market of precarious work.

My guest today, Catherine Honeyman, has a new book that explores Rwanda’s opportunities, challenges, and paradoxes in post-conflict development through the policy of mandatory entrepreneurship education, which is believed to be the country’s beacon for economic growth. Catherine Honeyman is a visiting scholar at the Duke Center for International Development and Managing Director of Ishya Consulting. Her new book, The Orderly Entrepreneur, takes us inside both policy making circles and classrooms to understand part of Rwanda’s social transformation. The Orderly Entrepreneur received an honorable mention from the Globalization and Education SIG’s 2016 Book Award.

Citation: Honeyman, Catherine, A., interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 64, podcast audio, March 13, 2017. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/catherinehoneyman/

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